Cleanup Skill

This skill documents the recommended process and rules for cleaning generated artifacts in the repository. Use this skill when performing repository housekeeping, CI cleanup, or when preparing a smaller distribution.

Rules

• •Always preserve canonical documentation and files under docs/ unless the file is explicitly a generated report (marked generated: or located in docs/reports/ with clear origin).
• •Do NOT delete files related to active or protected stories (e.g., files with US-AI-010 in the path or name) unless the owner confirms.
• •Generated test_*.txt files and benchmark outputs can be deleted; they are considered ephemeral and reproducible by running tests or scripts.
• •If unsure, move files to docs/archives/cleanup-<YYYYMMDD>/ instead of permanent deletion.
• •Before deleting, run a quick grep to ensure no tests or docs reference the file as a required artifact.

Steps

1. •Identify candidates: git ls-files --others --exclude-standard and rg "^test_.*\.txt$" -g '!docs/**'.
2. •Verify references: rg "<filename>" -S to find references in repo.
3. •Archive or delete:
   • •Archive: move files to docs/archives/cleanup-<YYYYMMDD>/.
   • •Delete: git rm <file> and commit with doc prefix: doc - remove generated test artifacts.
4. •Update docs/cleanup_prompt.md or skill metadata with the cleanup run summary.

Automation

• •Automation may run a cleanup job that removes files matching test_*.txt except those under docs/ and docs/species_audit/.
• •CI jobs should not delete artifacts used for official reports unless the artifact is regenerated by the workflow itself.

Example commit message

doc - cleanup: remove ephemeral test artifacts (test_*.txt)