Setup Graveyard Project

Set Up a Graveyard Project

This is the externalization event — the deliberate ceremony that flips a project into the graveyard phase. Its single job: get every piece of load-bearing knowledge out of heads and transcripts and into durable substrate, so a cold agent who has never seen the conversation can pick the project up tomorrow with nothing but git clone + the Notion Project Overview.

Externalization is step 2 of the graveyard way of working, and it is the whole game. A graveyard shift (the autonomous backlog drain) is only lossless if the handoff substrate is real. If knowledge is still trapped in a chat transcript or a local agent-memory file, the next cold agent starts blind and the model collapses. This skill is what makes "clear the session and resume from disk" a true statement.

This skill implements the conceptual canon in docs/operating-model.md (the four homes for knowledge) and docs/lifecycle.md (the phase transitions). Read those first if they exist — this skill is the executable form of those documents. (They may live in a sibling PR and not be on main yet; reference them by relative path regardless.)

The principle: four homes, nothing in two

Every piece of knowledge has exactly one durable home. Externalization is the act of routing each piece to its home and deleting the copies that were living somewhere temporary.

| Knowledge | Its one durable home | |---|---| | Project work to be done | GitHub issues / PRs | | Global work to be done | Notion Briefs DB | | Project durable knowledge (technical) | Repo docs (CLAUDE.md, docs/DECISIONS.md, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md) | | Project durable knowledge (strategic) | Notion Project Overview | | Global durable knowledge | Skills + global CLAUDE.md |

The two project homes must never duplicate each other, because they serve different readers:

• Repo docs = the technical canon an AGENT reads to execute. What the system is, why it's built this way, how to work in it. Lives in git so it versions with the code and a cold agent reads it on clone.
• Notion Project Overview = the strategic state a HUMAN reads to re-orient. What this project is, what phase it's in, where the work lives. The Overview points to git — it never copies it. Status, links, a one-line purpose, the last-externalized date. If you find yourself pasting architecture into the Overview, stop: that belongs in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, and the Overview should link to it.

When in doubt about where something goes: would an agent need this to execute? → repo docs. Would a human need this to decide whether to re-engage? → Overview. Is it a unit of work? → an issue. If it's none of those, it probably isn't load-bearing and can be dropped.

The minimal graveyard-ready repo contract

A repo cannot flip to the graveyard phase until all four of these exist. This is the contract the ceremony is driving toward — the checklist below is just the work of satisfying it:

• CLAUDE.md — agent operating instructions / the technical-canon entry point. The first thing a cold agent reads.
• docs/OVERVIEW.md — one-line purpose + a LINK to the Notion Project Overview. Points out; never duplicates strategic state.
• docs/DECISIONS.md — the decision log. Why things are the way they are.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — architecture canon. What the system is and how it fits together.

If any of the four is missing at the end, the project is not graveyard-ready and you must not report it as such.

The ceremony

Drive the project through these seven steps in order. Earlier steps surface knowledge; later steps route it home and verify nothing leaked.

1. Issue hygiene — sweep heads and chat into GitHub issues

Everything that is a unit of work must become a GitHub issue. Walk the recent conversation, any local TODO/notes files, scratchpad memory, and the user's stated intentions, and file what isn't filed.

• gh issue list --state open to see what already exists; don't duplicate.
• For each piece of pending work still living in chat or someone's head, open an issue with a real problem statement — enough that a cold agent could pick it up. A one-line "fix the thing" issue is not externalized knowledge; it's a reminder to re-derive it later.
• Triage: apply labels/priority so the backlog is real and ordered, not a pile. A graveyard shift will consume this list directly, so the ordering you leave is the ordering it executes.
• This is the moment to be honest about scope. Work the user mentioned but never filed will be lost the instant the transcript is cleared. If it matters, it's an issue now.

2. Seed the technical canon — docs/DECISIONS.md and docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

Create docs/ if needed. These two files are the durable answer to "why is it like this" and "what is it."

• docs/DECISIONS.md — a running decision log, newest-first or dated entries. Capture the load-bearing calls made so far: the ones currently living only in the conversation ("we decided to use X over Y because Z"). Each entry: the decision, the date, and the why — the why is the part that's expensive to reconstruct and the part that rots fastest in memory. A future agent reads this to avoid re-litigating settled calls.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — what the system is: components, data flow, where things live, the key boundaries. Enough that an agent can navigate the codebase without spelunking. Point to real paths. Don't transcribe every file; capture the shape and the load-bearing constraints.

Write what's true now, sourced from the conversation and the code — not aspirations. An aspiration is an issue (step 1), not architecture.

3. Write CLAUDE.md — the agent operating instructions

This is the entry point a cold agent reads first. It is the technical-canon index plus the rules of the road for working in this repo:

• One-paragraph statement of what the project is and its current phase (graveyard).
• Pointers into the canon: "decisions live in docs/DECISIONS.md, architecture in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, strategic state in the Notion Overview linked from docs/OVERVIEW.md."
• Project-specific operating rules: how to build/test/run, conventions, guardrails, anything an agent must know before touching code.
• Keep it an index and a ruleset, not a duplicate of the canon — it points to DECISIONS/ARCHITECTURE, it doesn't restate them.

> The Notion URL lives in exactly one place: docs/OVERVIEW.md. CLAUDE.md and everything else reference that file for strategic state, never the raw Notion URL. This is what lets you write CLAUDE.md here (step 3) before the Notion page exists (step 4) — there's no forward dependency on the URL.

4. Create the Notion Project Overview (strategic state)

Create the project's page in the Notion Project Overviews database via the briefs publisher CLI at ~/.config/ai-briefs/notion_briefs.py. (If the briefs system isn't configured in this environment — no ~/.config/ai-briefs/token — run the notion-briefs setup skill first.)

The Overview page holds: Name · Status · Repo (URL) · One-line purpose · Last externalized (date) · Body. The body is strategic orientation for a human: what this project is for, what phase it's in, where the live work is — with links to the repo, the issues, and the docs. It does not copy architecture or decisions; it points at them.

• Set Status → Graveyard.
• Stamp Last externalized with today's date.
• Confirm the Repo URL and one-line purpose are present.

The command is overview upsert (idempotent — creates the page, or updates it if one with that --name already exists):

python3 ~/.config/ai-briefs/notion_briefs.py overview upsert \
  --name "" --status Graveyard --repo  \
  --purpose "" --last-externalized  --file 

⚠️ --name must EXACTLY match the project's existing Briefs --project tag. A mismatch forks the project into two surfaces (the exact Local AI Comparison / local-ai-comparison drift the Project Overviews DB exists to kill). Check the current tag with notion_briefs.py projects before you run this. See the publisher's README.md for the full flag set.

5. Drop the docs/OVERVIEW.md stub

A thin file — a few lines — that exists so an agent in the repo can find the strategic state without leaving git:

• The one-line purpose.
• A link to the Notion Project Overview page (the URL from step 4).
• One sentence saying strategic/current state lives in the Overview; this file just points there.

That's it. If docs/OVERVIEW.md grows past a short stub, knowledge has leaked back in — it's a pointer, not a home.

6. Integrity check — no load-bearing knowledge left behind

This is the step that makes externalization honest, and it's the one most likely to be skipped. Verify that nothing load-bearing now lives only in a transcript or a local memory file.

• Re-read the recent conversation with one question: if this chat were deleted right now, what would be lost? Anything that surfaces is a leak — route it: a decision → docs/DECISIONS.md, an architectural fact → docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, a unit of work → an issue, strategic context → the Overview.
• Inspect any local agent-memory files (.memory, scratchpad notes, agent state, CLAUDE.local.md, etc.). Local memory is demoted to a thin accelerant — ideally ~zero — never a source of truth. Anything in it that's load-bearing gets externalized to its real home, then the local copy is cleared or reduced to a stub that just points at the durable homes.
• The test for success: could a cold agent who has only git clone + the Notion Overview, and has never seen this conversation, resume this project? If the answer is "no, they'd be missing X," then X hasn't been externalized — go put it home.

7. Confirm the contract → graveyard-ready

Verify all four contract files exist and are non-stub (except OVERVIEW.md, which is supposed to be a stub):

ls CLAUDE.md docs/OVERVIEW.md docs/DECISIONS.md docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

Confirm the Notion Overview shows Status = Graveyard with today's last-externalized date. Only when both the repo contract and the Overview are satisfied is the project graveyard-ready. Report it as ready — and only then.

Seeding an overview for a project you are NOT externalizing (the bulk / remote-seed case)

The ceremony above externalizes the project you are in. But overviews also get seeded remotely — you're setting up the Project Overviews DB and creating a page for a project whose repo you are not currently sitting in (a bulk seed across many repos, or standing up one project's page from another). That case has a hard atomicity rule.

The atomicity rule. Creating an overview page for another project MUST, in the same step, inject the canonical fill-issue (below) into that project's repo — and vice versa: injecting a fill-issue MUST be paired with a page (created unfilled, ready for that project to fill). Never create one without the other.

The invariant, stated plainly: > An overview in an unfilled state with no open fill-issue in its repo is an orphan bug. So is an open fill-issue with no page. Neither may exist alone.

Why this is load-bearing: the page starts unfilled by design — each repo fills its own on its next graveyard shift, and the fill closes the driving issue. The fill-issue is the mechanism that makes an unfilled page self-fill. A page with no issue can never self-fill; it just sits orphaned forever. (This is not hypothetical: a bulk seed once created pages for sc-auth, sc-kg-analysis / "State Change Mentor", and thedebate / "Councilors" with zero fill-issues — three orphans repaired by hand. This rule is the durable fix.)

So the seed step is two coupled writes, done together:

# 0. ensure the label exists in the target repo — do this BEFORE creating the page, so the
#    labeled issue-create in step 2 can't fail after a page already exists. Idempotent
#    existence check (create only if absent) so a real auth/network failure still surfaces
#    rather than being masked — a masked failure here re-manufactures the orphan.
gh label list --repo rhdeck/ --search graveyard-infra | grep -q '^graveyard-infra' \
  || gh label create graveyard-infra --repo rhdeck/ \
       --description "Graveyard infra task (owns its Notion Project Overview)" --color FBCA04
# 1. create the (unfilled) overview page
python3 ~/.config/ai-briefs/notion_briefs.py overview upsert \
  --name "" --status  --repo https://github.com/rhdeck/
# 2. inject the driving fill-issue INTO THAT PROJECT'S REPO, in the same step — with the discoverable label
gh issue create --repo rhdeck/ \
  --title "Fill out this project's Notion Project Overview (graveyard infra)" \
  --label graveyard-infra \
  --body-file 

If either write fails, back the other out (or fix it immediately) — a half-done seed is exactly the orphan the invariant forbids.

The canonical fill-issue template

Reproduce this verbatim. Substitute {name} = the exact Notion project name used verbatim as --name, and {repo} = the repo slug.

TITLE: Fill out this project's Notion Project Overview (graveyard infra)

LABEL: graveyard-infra (see below).

BODY:

**Graveyard infra task — own your Notion Project Overview.**

State Change now keeps a Notion **Project Overviews** database — one page per project — as the strategic spine. Every brief/shift report links to it (via the `Project Overview` relation, replacing the old free-text project tag), so we can click straight from a brief into the project's page. **Each repo is responsible for filling out its own overview** — pick this up during your next graveyard shift (or now).

### Your project
- **Exact project name (use verbatim as `--name`):** `{name}`
- **Repo:** https://github.com/rhdeck/{repo}

⚠️ The `--name` must match `{name}` **exactly** — a mismatch forks the project into two pages.

### What to do — fill profile + data + icon/cover
(publisher CLI at `~/.config/ai-briefs/notion_briefs.py`, `overview upsert` with --name/--status/--repo/--purpose/--icon/--cover/--file; Profile = Status+Repo+Purpose; Data = short human-facing strategic writeup that POINTS to repo docs, not architecture; plus icon+cover)

### Done when
`overview list` shows `{name}` with Status, purpose, an icon, and a populated body.

The graveyard-infra label — make the fill-issue discoverable

Apply the label graveyard-infra to every injected fill-issue. This is what lets the orphan-audit (and any cross-repo reconcile) query fill-issues by label rather than grepping issue titles for a substring — a stable, queryable handle instead of a fragile string match. Apply it at injection time (gh issue create --label graveyard-infra, creating the label in the target repo first if it doesn't exist). Light follow-up: back-apply graveyard-infra to the existing open fill-issues that predate this rule, so the whole population is label-discoverable.

Maintenance: the orphan audit

A documented procedure — not a tool — to catch any orphan the seed flow may have produced (or any pre-rule orphan). Reconcile unfilled overview pages against open fill-issues, per repo:

# 1. list overview pages still in an unfilled state (no populated body / seeded-not-filled)
python3 ~/.config/ai-briefs/notion_briefs.py overview list

# 2. for each such page's repo, check for an OPEN fill-issue by label
gh issue list --repo rhdeck/ --label graveyard-infra --state open

Reconcile the two lists:

• Unfilled page with NO open fill-issue in its repo → orphan. Repair by injecting the canonical fill-issue (above) into that repo, with the graveyard-infra label. This restores the atomicity invariant.
• Open fill-issue with NO overview page → the inverse orphan. Repair by seeding the page (overview upsert) for that

…

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: rhdeck
• Source: rhdeck/operating-model
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.