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work/archive/

This directory holds completed work plans that are worth preserving for historical or decision-record value — a record of what was done, why, and what was learned, even after the work itself is finished.

Conventions

  • Organize archived plans by date prefix, matching the naming convention used in work/active/, e.g.: work/archive/2026-07-10-example-task.md
  • Do not rewrite history: once archived, a plan should generally be left as it was when the work concluded, rather than continuously edited.
  • Not every finished plan needs to be archived. If a plan was purely mechanical and has no lasting context worth keeping, delete it instead of archiving it. Use judgment — archive what a future agent or teammate would benefit from reading.

How this differs from docs/decisions/ (ADRs)

work/archive/ is not the same thing as docs/decisions/:

  • work/archive/ contains execution records — what was actually done, in what order, with what results. These are process artifacts.
  • docs/decisions/ contains decision records (ADRs) — durable, citable statements of what was decided and why, intended to be referenced by future work.

If an archived plan surfaced a decision that should bind future work and isn't already captured as an ADR, write that ADR separately under docs/decisions/. Don't rely on work/archive/ to carry that weight — it is not indexed or treated as authoritative the way ADRs are.


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