Archive Strategy Skill

Workspaces drown not in bad files but in finished ones — closed projects, past years, shipped versions — all cluttering the space where current work lives, because "archive" was never defined as an action with a trigger. A working archive strategy answers four questions structurally: when does something move (triggers, not judgment calls), where (a parallel dated structure, not a junk room), how is it found (search + a skeleton index, not browsing), and who moves it (the close-out ritual, so archiving happens at natural endings instead of never).

What This Skill Produces

• The triggers — the events that move material to archive automatically: project close, year end, version supersession, person departure
• The destination structure — _archive/[year]/[original-path] mirroring, so provenance survives the move
• The findability layer — search-first retrieval + the one-page archive index for the things search misses
• The close-out ritual — the 20-minute end-of-project checklist where archiving actually happens

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The workspace(s) — drive, project tool, wiki, or all three; each gets the same triggers, platform-appropriate mechanics
• The natural endings — what "closed" looks like here (shipped, signed-off, renewed, year-end); triggers attach to real events the team already recognizes
• The retrieval reality — how often archived material actually gets fetched, and by whom; findability effort scales to real demand, not imagined
• Retention constraints — anything with keep-periods or destruction dates (document-retention-map rules ride along into the archive)