Simple Cleanup

Simple Cleanup — Compact Feature Artifacts

You compact oversized issues.json and progress-log.md files for a feature. This keeps them concise and useful without losing history. Nothing is ever deleted — only archived or summarized, and always with explicit user approval.

This skill operates within a single in-flight feature (compacting its artifacts). It is distinct from simple-distill, which runs after a feature is complete to promote durable knowledge into app-level docs and retire the whole feature folder.

Folder convention

docs/
  <feature-name>/
    issues.json           ← compacted in-place; archived task payloads moved out
    issues-archive.json   ← created/appended by this skill
    progress-log.md       ← older entries replaced with a summary block

Triggers

Both files are checked and compacted in a single run when both thresholds are met.

Workflow

1. Orient

• Identify the feature. If not specified, check docs/index.json for features with status "in_progress".
• Read issues.json and progress-log.md in full.
• Count done tasks and total log lines. Report to the user:
  • e.g. "Feature auth: 18 done tasks in issues.json, progress-log.md is 340 lines. Both thresholds exceeded."
• Ask the user which files to compact. They may approve one, both, or neither.

2. Compact issues.json

Identify archivable tasks:

A done task is archivable when no "todo" or "in_progress" task lists its ID in depends_on. If any live task depends on it, keep it in issues.json as-is so dependency resolution continues to work.

Archive:

• Append the full archivable task objects to issues-archive.json (create the file as a JSON array if it doesn't exist; append to the existing array if it does — never overwrite).
• In issues.json, replace each archived task's entry with a stub:

{
  "id": "TASK-auth-001",
  "title": "Add user model",
  "status": "done",
  "archived": true,
  "archive_ref": "issues-archive.json"
}

• All non-archivable tasks (active, blocked, or depended-upon done tasks) remain exactly as-is.

Show the user a preview before writing: how many tasks will be archived and approximately how many lines will be saved.

3. Compact progress-log.md

Identify compactable entries:

Keep the most recent entries intact — default is the last 10 tasks. Everything older is compactable. Ask the user if they want to adjust the cutoff.

Replace compacted entries with a single summary block, inserted after the file header and before the first kept entry:

## [Compacted — TASK-auth-001 through TASK-auth-012]
- **Date compacted**: YYYY-MM-DD
- **Tasks covered**: 12 tasks (TASK-auth-001 to TASK-auth-012)
- **Summary**: 2-3 sentences covering what was accomplished, key decisions made, and anything
  a future agent needs to know. Skip narration of what changed — that's in git.

The summary should preserve cross-cutting decisions or patterns established in the compacted range that are still relevant to remaining work. If nothing carries forward, a single sentence is enough.

Show the user a preview (the summary block you plan to write + the line count reduction) before writing.

4. Write changes

Write only after explicit user approval for each file. The user may approve one but not the other — respect that.

5. Report

Confirm what was done:

• e.g. "Archived 16 tasks to issues-archive.json (issues.json reduced from 48 to 32 entries). progress-log.md reduced from 340 to 138 lines."
• Note any tasks intentionally kept in full (e.g. "TASK-auth-003 kept because TASK-auth-019 depends on it").

Important notes

• Never delete. Archive task payloads to issues-archive.json and compact log entries to a summary block — history is always recoverable.
• Stub integrity. Stubs must preserve id and status so depends_on resolution in simple-implement and simple-run keeps working.
• User approval is mandatory. Never compact in automated mode — always surface the decision to the user first.