Pre Completion Cleanup Audit

Pre-completion cleanup audit

A required gate before claiming task completion. Surfaces residue that would otherwise accumulate and force later remediation passes (see operations/mnt-analysis-cleanup for the heavyweight version that runs after this has been skipped enough times).

Why this exists

Sessions accumulate four categories of residue that aren't always visible from the immediate task:

1. In-repo working-tree drift — uncommitted changes, untracked files, stashes, leftover .tmp/ or .partial artifacts from interrupted operations
2. Sibling-of-canonical accumulations — /mnt/local-analysis/ siblings, outer-clone duplicates, orphan worktrees
3. Scratch artifacts — /tmp/<session-id>/ files, ad-hoc patches in unusual locations
4. State markers — .cleanup-lock, .cleanup-trash/, abandoned *.partial files, half-completed two-phase deletes

Each category has its own remediation skill. This skill's job is detection, not full disposition — it surfaces what exists, the agent decides what's required.

The audit (Iron Law: report, don't auto-delete)

Run these in order. Each step is a single grep/find/ls; combined runtime should be under 10 seconds.

Pipefail pitfall: if you run the audit inside set -euo pipefail, find ... | head and similar early-closing pipelines can exit 141 from SIGPIPE even though the audit succeeded. Use sed -n '1,20p' or wrap the pipeline with || true for report-only probes; cleanup audit commands should surface residue, not fail the closeout because head closed the pipe.

Nested-repo timeout pitfall: workspace-hub style checkouts may contain nested tier-1 repos or large data trees. Do not let report-only find . scans traverse every nested checkout until they time out. Bound them with timeout, prune .git and known nested repo directories, and report that the scan was scoped. Example:

timeout 8 bash -lc "find . -path ./.git -prune -o -path ./worldenergydata -prune -o -path ./llm-wiki -prune -o -path ./assethold -prune -o -path ./aceengineer-website -prune -o -path ./aceengineer-strategy -prune -o \( -name '*.partial' -o -name '*.tmp' \) -print" | sed -n '1,20p'

1. Repo working-tree state

cd <canonical-repo>
git status --short
git stash list
find . -name '*.partial' -o -name '*.tmp' 2>/dev/null | head

2. Sibling-of-canonical state (only when canonical repo is under /mnt/local-analysis/ or analog)

ls -la <repo-parent-dir>
# Cross-reference each non-canonical entry against the mnt-analysis-cleanup taxonomy

If a repo-location / working-style contract issue is active, do not treat remaining sibling tier-1 checkouts as disposable cleanup residue merely because a cleanup pass was reported. Verify the live parent directory, report the observed set, and classify sibling repos as one of:

• EXPECTED — legitimate adjacent checkout under a pending/approved placement contract, or task-scoped output;
• UNEXPECTED — duplicate/orphan/dirty checkout with no traced role;
• DEFER — needs a repo-location contract plan before any move/delete.

Phrase cleanup evidence precisely: “first-level entries observed are …” rather than “all folders were cleaned except …” when live probes show additional siblings. Repo placement changes require the issue-planning route; this audit reports state and must not opportunistically finish cleanup.

3. Scratch artifacts under /tmp

find /tmp -maxdepth 3 -user "$USER" -mmin -240 -type f \
  ! -path '*/claude-*/tasks/*' \
  ! -path '*/snapshot-*' \
  ! -path '*/com.google.Chrome.scoped_dir.*/*' \
  ! -path '*/playwright-*/*' \
  2>/dev/null | sed -n '1,40p'

(Exclude harness/browser-managed paths; surface only user-meaningful scratch.) If browser automation profiles exist, summarize them by top-level directory instead of listing cached files. The useful closeout signal is usually ad-hoc issue/comment drafts, screenshots, downloads, or manually named scratch files — not Chrome cache internals.

If /tmp contains the requested deliverable itself (for example: recursive inventory output, exported report, generated media, downloaded attachment, or a helper script the user asked for), classify it as EXPECTED residue when it is named, verified, and delivered/linked in the final response. See references/user-facing-scratch-artifacts.md for the closeout wording pattern.

4. Lock/trash-stage state

ls /mnt/local-analysis/.cleanup-lock 2>/dev/null
ls -la /mnt/local-analysis/.cleanup-trash/ 2>/dev/null | head

5. Session-local handoff/session-doc state

git status --short docs/sessions/ docs/session-handoffs/ docs/handoffs/ 2>/dev/null

When the user says "document and prepare to exit", write a concise handoff before final audit if the session changed repo state or closed an issue. Include: active task, completed actions, verified repo/issue state, uncommitted expected residue, blockers, and exact next checkpoint. If the canonical task repo is clean but the control-plane repo is dirty/divergent with unrelated pre-existing changes, do not force a mixed commit; classify the new handoff/skill patch as EXPECTED residue and name the unrelated dirty state separately.

Verdict format

Report to the upstream consumer (user or orchestrator) in three buckets:

Never report "all done" with UNEXPECTED residue present.

Hermes flow-through integration

When Hermes orchestrates sub-agents (Claude/Codex/Gemini), Hermes SHOULD run this audit on every sub-agent completion signal before relaying "done" to the user:

1. Sub-agent sends task_status: complete over the gateway
2. Hermes pauses the completion signal
3. Hermes invokes this skill's audit checklist via bash -lc '<inline-script>'
4. If CLEAN → relay completion
5. If EXPECTED → relay completion + append a "residue surfaced" annotation
6. If UNEXPECTED → dispatch back to the sub-agent: "audit found residue; resolve before completion"

The Hermes-side hook is tracked in workspace-hub issue (file follow-up: cleanup-audit-flow-through).

When NOT to run

• Trivial single-tool-call tasks (e.g., "show me the diff") — overhead exceeds value
• Mid-task checkpoints — only run before completion, not between steps
• Inside subagent contexts that report back to a main session — let the main session run the audit once, not N times

Adjacent skills

• operations/mnt-analysis-cleanup — heavyweight retroactive cleanup when this audit has been skipped repeatedly
• workspace-hub-learned/full-branch-cleanup-and-worktree-hygiene — branch/worktree-specific
• workspace-hub-learned/blocked-branch-preserve-tag-cleanup — when preservation is needed before cleanup
• github/github-issue-closeout-race-safe — closeout sequencing for GH issues specifically

This skill is the trigger upstream of all of them: detect what exists, then route to the right disposition skill.