Archiving Agent Notes

Reduce the active decision corpus without erasing history that can still guide work. Judge every note semantically; word count and age are discovery aids, never archive criteria.

Read the contracts

Read the repository's Agent Note rules, archive instructions, and the applicable lifecycle instructions before classifying. Use current skills, docs, newer notes, and inbound links to establish whether a rationale still owns or constrains anything.

Check supersession when adding a note

Apply the repository's note-creation criteria before drafting. Every new note triggers a scoped audit of active notes covering the same decision, mechanism, or rejected alternative. Classify each full or partial supersession while writing the new note: archive qualifying implemented triplets in the same PR, retain and cross-link partial supersessions or independently useful rationale, reject obsolete proposals, and delete rejected notes that no longer prevent a plausible mistake. Apply the consolidation rule when the new owner absorbs every unique proposition, deleting the absorbed triplet whole; do not defer a known match.

Classify by future value

• Implemented — keep active: retain a note when its rationale, alternatives, negative guarantee, durability or wire semantics, security rule, ownership boundary, or reintroduction condition is likely to guide a future change. Classify the decision rather than the mechanics: a rename can still establish a lasting compatibility rule.
• Implemented — archive: archive a note when the shipped decision is complete and its body is unlikely to guide future work.
• Proposed — never archive: keep a live proposal active; if it is no longer worth pursuing, reject it with an honest reason.
• Rejected — keep only as a guardrail: retain a rejection only when the losing proposal remains a tempting, meaningful mistake.
• Rejected — delete: delete the whole triplet when the rejected idea is obsolete or unlikely to prevent re-litigation. Repair or delete inbound links.