Snapshot

Snapshot — Pre-Edit Doc Versioning

Preserve the current state of a doc to its sibling .archive/ directory before editing. The canonical path remains authoritative; the archive holds the version trail for diff and rollback.

Run before material edits to docs worth preserving versions of: blog posts, project plans, voice specifications, design documents, configuration files, anything where reading "what was this before the change" is sometimes useful.

Setup

1. Confirm the canonical doc exists at the path the user named. If absent, surface a one-line note and stop. Nothing to preserve.
2. Determine the sibling archive directory: <dir>/.archive/ where <dir> is the canonical's parent. Create it if missing.
3. Compute the next version number. Scan the archive for files matching <basename>.v<N>.<ext>. Next N = max existing N + 1, or 1 if no prior snapshots of this basename exist.
4. Compare the canonical against the latest archived version, if any. If byte-identical, skip the snapshot and surface a one-line note. The archive should grow only when something changes.

The snapshot operation

Two modes. Pick by what comes next.

Mode A — mv (default)

Use when a Write call follows immediately. The canonical is empty for one operation, then refilled with the new version.

mv <canonical_path> <archive_dir>/<basename>.v<N>.<ext>

After the move, the caller writes the new version to the canonical path. Archive holds v; canonical holds v<N+1>.

Mode B — cp

Use when the canonical must remain readable during a long edit pass (multi-step polish, expansion, interactive review). The archive gets the prior; the canonical stays intact for in-place editing.

cp <canonical_path> <archive_dir>/<basename>.v<N>.<ext>

Default to Mode A unless the next operation is a long-running edit that reads the canonical multiple times.

Naming rule

Insert .v<N> before the final extension. The basename keeps the slug; the extension stays the same.

For docs with multiple dotted segments, treat the final dotted suffix as the extension. The rest is the basename.

Archive directory

Hidden directory .archive/ sits next to the doc, in the same parent. One archive per parent directory; all docs in the same parent share the archive.

~/.mdx/blog/
  0001-anchor-essay.md
  0010-claude-code-pins-you-to-1m.md
  .archive/
    0001-anchor-essay.v1.md
    0001-anchor-essay.v2.md
    0010-claude-code-pins-you-to-1m.v1.md

Archive contents are append-only by convention. Never edit a versioned file in place. If a snapshot was taken in error, take another snapshot of the canonical state to mark the next version and continue.

Output

After a successful snapshot:

Snapshotted: <canonical_path>
  → <archive_path>
Version: v<N>
Canonical ready for v<N+1> edits.

After a skipped snapshot (canonical unchanged since latest archive):

Skipped: <canonical_path>
  Latest archive v<N> is byte-identical. No snapshot taken.

After a missing canonical:

No canonical at <path>. Nothing to preserve.

One block per snapshot call. The caller proceeds to the edit.

Rules

• Run before material edits, not after. A snapshot taken after an edit preserves the wrong version.
• One snapshot per edit cycle. Avoid snapshotting twice in a row without intervening edits; the archive grows without signal.
• Default to mv when a Write call follows immediately. Use cp when the canonical must stay readable during a long edit pass.
• Skip silently when the canonical does not exist or is byte-identical to the latest archive entry. Surface a one-line note; do not error.
• Never edit archive contents. The archive is append-only.
• The canonical path always holds the latest. Readers, tools, and links point at the canonical; the archive is for diff and rollback only.
• Never snapshot inside .archive/ itself. Skip silently if the caller passes an archive path by mistake.
• Do not modify frontmatter during the snapshot. The archived file is a byte copy of the prior canonical. The new canonical's frontmatter belongs to the editor that follows.