create-smartfolder

name

create-smartfolder

description

Turn a folder hierarchy into a SmartFolder — a tiered navigation-and-knowledge layer over the real files, so people and future Claude sessions can operate in it with full context and synthesized knowledge without opening every file. Use whenever the user asks to create, build, or convert a folder into a SmartFolder, "smartfolder-ize" a directory, add a CLAUDE.md / README / synthesis layer over files, reorganize an archive or document repository so Claude can navigate it, or review, upgrade, or extend existing SmartFolder scaffolding — even if they never say "SmartFolder" but describe wanting a folder of records made self-describing, navigable, or Claude-ready. Also use when asked to organize or reorganize a folder without a scheme the user has already chosen, so deciding it requires understanding the contents: look first, then offer this method rather than assuming it. Not for file operations already specified — renaming to a stated pattern, moving named files, de-duplicating.

SmartFolder Skill (v6.5.0)

Turn the target folder into a SmartFolder: a self-maintaining navigation-and-knowledge layer over the real files, so the user, other people, and future Claude sessions can operate in it with full context — finding things by location, and drawing on synthesized knowledge that no single file contains — without opening every file.

How this skill runs

This is interactive, customized work, not a template application. The user will describe their intentions and goals in their own words — treat that as the requirements and this skill as the method. Expect an interview; the design is worked out together through the phases below, each ending at a review gate.

Design stance. Only the invariants and safety rules below are fixed. Everything else is decided per folder through a needs diagnostic, guided by principles, three real precedents, and the bundled kit. Detailed specification of flexible decisions is deliberately avoided: being overly prescriptive about flexible design choices becomes proscriptive in implementation — it forbids better designs. Where this skill is silent, design from the principles and precedents rather than asking for a rule.

Two kinds of bundled content, never to be confused. assets/kit/ is the kit: working exemplars and scripts that get adapted and deposited into the user's folder (Phase 5). Top-level references/ is the opposite — files this skill reads on demand when a branch fires and never deposits: references/UPGRADE_PATH.md (the full existing-SmartFolder upgrade path) and references/VERSION_HISTORY.md (the full changelog). Nothing from references/ ever lands in a built folder.

Non-negotiables (safety — these override everything else)

1. Nothing moves, gets renamed, or gets generated until the user approves a plan. Staged work, review gates.
2. Back up first (zip/tar the tree) before any move or rename. Log every move/rename to a move-log.csv. After moving, verify by content hash against the backup — not just counts.
3. Never delete. Instead, move unneeded files to a single manual-delete folder at the root; one such folder per SmartFolder. What the staging rule protects is a category, not a location: staged content never re-enters the folder's knowledge layer — never read, quoted, reconciled against, or restored from. One exception: a single light manifest (_README.md), written at staging time by the session that staged — one line per item: what moved, when, why, where the surviving copy is — so the owner isn't emptying unlabeled files on trust. The separating test: the manifest may be consulted only to answer a question about the disposal itself ("is it safe to empty this? why is that in there?"); any other use, including answering anything about the folder's subject matter, is a violation of the rule, not an exercise of the exception. The manifest is not curated, earns no maintenance, and dies with the contents — when the owner empties the folder, it resets.
4. macOS bundles are atomic (.rtfd, .oo3, .key, .pages, .numbers, .goodnotes, .webarchive, companion *_data dirs, and kin): rename if needed, never recurse into or write inside.
5. Never clobber existing guides, indexes, CLAUDE.md, or AGENTS.md without explicit OK. If SmartFolder scaffolding already exists, this is an upgrade, not a build (see Existing SmartFolders).
6. Don't modify file contents. Only add guide/derived files and (if approved) move/rename. If a folder is shared or off-limits, work from a copy.
7. Never guess. Flag anything you can't confidently summarize; a confidently wrong summary or synthesis is worse than none.

One procedure in this skill reaches the network — the monthly version check this skill deposits into every folder it builds (Phase 5); everything else is local files. The check degrades to silence when the network doesn't answer, so no folder ever depends on connectivity.

The invariant core (every SmartFolder shares these)

The tier model — read top-down, stop when you have enough:

• Tier 1 (resident): one resident root manual — CLAUDE.md; in the dual profile it exists as two byte-identical files, CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md (see Root files by agent population) — the only content that auto-loads every session and survives compaction. Protocol + conventions + behavioral rules + a thin top-level orientation. Keep it lean (under ~150 lines); detail lives in the files it points to.
• Tier 2 (on demand): a _README.md in each meaningful folder — a local router describing its own folder and mapping its immediate children. Tiny/leaf folders fold into the parent's guide.
• Tier 3 (on demand): derived, digested knowledge — per-file sidecars (<stem>_Summary.md), folder syntheses (_Synthesis.md), and whatever status surfaces the folder's needs call for (boards, decision logs, indexes, hubs). Which of these exist, and in what proportion, is the main design decision (see The diagnostic).
• Raw files: the bottom of the waterfall — opened only when a digest won't do.

Navigation is by location, not a central index. The root file states the protocol — before working in or answering about a folder, read its _README.md first — and each guide routes to its own children. Nothing global to keep in sync. Only the root file is named CLAUDE.md; per-folder guides stay _README.md (nested CLAUDE.md auto-loading is a Claude-Code-specific, after-the-fact behavior — the explicit protocol is portable across products and predictable).

Root files by agent population (dial 7). Single-agent folders keep one root CLAUDE.md and pay none of what follows. Where the dial says other assistants may work the folder, use guarded duplication: byte-identical CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md, each carrying a one-line reciprocal instruction — any change to one is applied to the other before the task completes. AGENTS.md is canonical on divergence; repair by re-copying from it, and add a root-files-differ check (cmp AGENTS.md CLAUDE.md — silence means identical) to the folder's integrity script, or to its runbook verification list if it runs none. Never assemble either root file with @ imports: some surfaces inject CLAUDE.md verbatim with no import expansion, so an imported manual arrives empty — no error, no trace. Why duplication: the project-root file is re-read from disk and re-injected after compaction, which conversation content is not, so a real file — not a pointer to one — is what survives a long session on every surface; and duplication's failure mode, divergence, is mechanically detectable where a stub's mid-session staleness is not. In dual folders, deposited wording is agent-neutral ("ask your AI assistant"), lock files record the holder "via <assistant/surface>", and nothing relies on HTML comments being invisible — other agents read them as content. The root file is context, not enforcement: deposited wording never promises compliance.

Every derived surface is dated and ranked:

• Every guide, synthesis, and status surface carries an As of [YYMMDD] line.
• Recency wins: when two dated surfaces disagree, the more recent as-of date wins.
• Raw beats derived: a synthesis or summary is AI interpretation; the raw file wins on conflict.
• The filesystem beats the map: a live directory listing outranks any guide's file map.

Derived knowledge surfaces — where the added value lives. The derived layer holds knowledge that no single file contains and that would otherwise require tedious browsing of many files. Synthesis (_Synthesis.md) is the archetype: it exists only where the whole exceeds the parts, correlating, combining, and commenting across a folder's files to yield the holistic story — arcs, patterns, cost roll-ups, cross-system connections, recurring failure modes. Synthesis has siblings, distinguished by the kind of tedium they remove: a status board (currency over time — one dated line per workstream plus its next gate); a longitudinal tracker (one subject — a medical issue, a negotiation arc, an easement — threaded across many files and years); a decision log (append-only dated record of what was decided, with sources); cross-folder maps and hubs (maintenance calendars, vendor directories, sensitive-info maps, entity indexes); and computed views (dashboards, charts, extract tables built from the structured layer). The taxonomy is open — invent the species this folder's questions call for.

All species share one discipline: an As of [YYMMDD] header; claims anchored in-narrative ("through [date]…"); stated provenance (what it was derived from, as of what state — which doubles as the staleness test) and a decay condition (when it might begin to be wrong); a label as derived AI analysis (raw wins); and the one-line breadcrumb "To refresh: ask your AI assistant to update this." The discipline belongs to every derived surface, Tier-2 guides included: a _README.md's descriptive front matter carries its as-of line, provenance, and decay condition like any Tier-3 species. The behavioral rule — offer to refresh any derived surface materially behind its sources before relying on it — lives once, in the root file, not in each file.

Write forward, not backward (live surfaces). A live surface — one whose subject is still moving: a board row, a README's front matter, the synthesis of an ongoing system — leads with the present: current state + what's next, one screen, written from now looking forward. The test: a newcomer's first screen answers "where do things stand?" without summing dated patches. Refreshing means rewriting the front matter, not appending a dated delta — appending is the writer's cheap path, but it shifts the cost onto every future reader. Small deltas may accrete between rewrites; at a chapter boundary (a close, a kill, a pivot, a replacement) the surface is rewritten state-first and the accumulated narrative is demoted whole into a labeled history section or a sealed, dated index, with one pointer from the front matter — never deleted or summarized away (that is what makes rewriting safe). Tripwire: front matter carrying more history than present state is a boundary in disguise — a rewrite is due. Archival syntheses of completed arcs already comply: their "present" is the finished story. Deposit this rule in each SmartFolder's root CLAUDE.md (procedure in the runbook) — accretion is a maintenance-time failure, and the skill won't be there.

Sidecars (<stem>_Summary.md) are caches, not commentary. A sidecar pays rent when the raw file's read-cost × consultation-frequency is high. Typical triggers: long or dense PDFs and transcripts (re-reading a 60-page transcript can cost a session 100K+ tokens); scanned, OCR'd, or handwritten material where extraction is slow or error-prone; formats Claude reads poorly or not at all (the sidecar is then the only machine access); authority documents — contracts, reports, rulings — whose exact terms will be asked about repeatedly (capture the key terms plus last-mile pointers: "signature page is p. 14"); files whose payload is visual; and files a synthesis leans on, where the sidecar doubles as the synthesis's provenance anchor. Skip routine items, media dumps, and anything the folder's README or synthesis already covers. Sidecars move with their file.

Self-orientation from anywhere: each _README.md opens with one line noting it is part of a SmartFolder whose protocol lives in the root CLAUDE.md — so a session that mounts a subfolder can still find the system.

Proportionality: every artifact must pay rent — real signal against its maintenance cost. No rote guides, no unwarranted syntheses, no machinery a folder's needs don't justify.

Self-containment: the finished SmartFolder carries its own maintenance payload (see Phase 5). After the build, this skill is only needed to seed new SmartFolders — never to maintain this one.

Naming (the default house convention — adapt to the folder's own tradition where one exists):

• Dates lead, as YYMMDD or YYMM, no dashes; YYYY only when just the year is known. Decode 2-digit years by century (≥90 → 1900s). If the archive spans the century boundary or the 1980s, raise it in Phase 2 — string sorting breaks across centuries — and agree on handling.
• PascalCase within one concept, underscores between concepts; theme-first so like items cluster: DATE_Type_Specifier.ext (e.g. 2312_WaterReport_FairfaxCounty.pdf).
• Where a name is vague or wrong, peek inside and name by real content; add missing extensions; fix problem characters (colons, #, hidden/non-breaking spaces, trailing spaces). Bulk-rename with globs, not hardcoded names, and verify each rename happened.
• Bulk media/photo dumps: batch-name, don't curate each; describe the group in the guide.

The diagnostic (design through interview, not menu)

Before proposing scaffolding, learn the folder's needs — from the user's stated intentions, from Phase-1 exploration, and by asking (AskUserQuestion works well here). The dials:

1. Writers and users. Who adds or edits files — Claude only, one human, several humans? Via a sanctioned intake path or directly? How technical is each? And whose files are they? If this reveals the minority case — the folder holds files of an owner who is not driving or coordinating the build — suggest winning the owner's buy-in before the plan executes: a warm, non-technical one-page note saying what will move and why, with nothing deleted (the kit's Example_Owner_Letter.md models the shape and tone). Most folders are built by, with, or under the authority of their owner and pass through with no mention — this is a conditional offer, never a standing step. Usage changes over time, so the deposited growth menu carries the same trigger forward. A second conditional offer hangs on the same dial: where several people will use the folder across sessions, offer the session-flags register (the kit's Example_SESSION_FLAGS.md) — a person-addressed notification surface for "next time X is here, tell or ask them Y," whose content and state live entirely in the register while the root file carries only the trigger. Collaborative folders only — a single-writer folder is never shown it; the deposited growth menu carries the same conditional row forward, so a folder that grows into multi-user life can reach it later.
2. Change velocity. Archival (rarely changes), slow-drip, or live and fast-moving?
3. Dominant question type. What will people mostly ask here — navigation ("where is X?"), wisdom ("how does this work? what matters? what's due?"), or status ("where do things stand?")?
4. Enforcement posture. Should integrity machinery offer (advisory, non-blocking) or gate (hard checks before work proceeds)?
5. Authority model. Raw files only? Hand-authored primary notes that must stay primary and be kept in sync? Volatile facts needing a single dated source-of-truth surface?
6. Audience and tone. Who reads the guides — and how plain must the language be?
7. Agent population. Will AI assistants other than Claude work this folder? The relevant population is assistants that work in folders, not chat alone. Ask in plain product terms, without assuming the user knows what any of these are: "Will this folder be used only with Claude (Cowork or Claude Code), or also with other AI tools that work in your folders — OpenAI's ChatGPT Work or Codex, Google's Gemini (Spark or CLI), Microsoft Copilot, Cursor, or something else — now or someday?" Only Claude → single profile: one root CLAUDE.md, none of the dual tax. Anything else → the dual profile (see ). If the user is unsure, choose single: converting later is one copy plus the reciprocal lines.

Allocation principles (the actual design law):

• Spend the derived-layer budget where the dominant question lives. Navigation-heavy → rich _README.md coverage. Wisdom-heavy → syntheses (and perhaps a one-page hub). Status-heavy → boards, decision logs, indexes, sidecars.
• Control machinery scales with write-traffic × writer count: none → a casual tripwire → intake discipline with locks and hard integrity gates. Never more than the traffic justifies.
• File-map richness: enumerate files only where names can't speak for themselves, and scale enumeration down as change velocity rises — a good renaming pass and a file map are substitutes; in a fast-moving folder, annotate and route rather than list.
• Tone to the least technical reader who will use the folder.
• Invent freely; skip freely. Derive machinery this list doesn't name if the needs call for it; omit anything here that doesn't pay rent. Confirm significant inventions with the user before building.

Precedents (case law, not templates)

Three real SmartFolders built with this method. Note what they share (the invariant core, exactly) and how each spends its budget differently — driven by its needs, not by a feature list.

• The Archive — a 22-year, ~6,700-file family records archive; one technical user; near-zero change velocity; dominant question "where is X?". Allocation: a _README.md in every meaningful folder with full annotated file maps (stable, because content rarely changes); only two syntheses, placed at genuine arc points (the whole academic record; a school-search saga); no sidecars, no locks, no boards. A generator script emits guide scaffolding and stamps content-hash markers so re-runs preserve hand edits; a documented periodic sweep handles intake.
• The Advisory folder — estate/property records shared with a non-technical owner; owner edits files directly; dominant questions operational ("what's due? how does this system work?"). Allocation: ~40 per-system syntheses seeded from the owner's hand-authored MASTER notes (which stay primary, with a stated sync protocol), plus a one-page Operations Hub (maintenance calendar, vendor directory, sensitive-info map). Integrity is a non-blocking daily tripwire — a watcher that detects direct changes and offers dispositions, never gates. Warm, jargon-decoded tone; gotchas storytold; polished owner-facing PDFs at the root.
• The Operational folder — a live, multi-user deal workspace shared on Dropbox; several writers; daily change; dominant question "where do things stand?". Allocation: a one-screen status board, per-initiative decision logs and document indexes, and per-file summary sidecars on most documents so raw files rarely need reopening. Control machinery is hard: all new content enters through an inbox workflow under a courtesy lock; a content-hash manifest with a session-start scan and a review queue makes colleague edits surface within a day; prescriptive tone; explicit lifecycle (closed initiatives archived with closing memos).

License clause: these are precedents, not menus. Cite them, interpolate between them, depart from them — the test is whether the resulting scaffolding serves this folder's diagnostic, not whether it resembles an example.

The companion kit (bundled — assets/kit/)

Working artifacts drawn from the three precedents ship with this skill: the integrity and change-tracking scripts, a guide generator, an inbox workflow and lock file, a drift-disposition matrix, and growth menu / owner letter / owner guide / status board / decision log / review queue / operations hub / synthesis / guide / sidecar exemplars. Integrity machinery comes in three species — the advisory tripwire (offers), the hard gate (blocks), and the generator's content-hash markers (protect generated guides from regeneration) — and the matrix is the hard gate's companion reference, not a rung the advisory tier is climbing toward. Start from assets/kit/00_KIT_README.md, which maps each artifact to the diagnostic dials that warrant it. That README's table is the index — it answers whether an artifact is warranted; the exemplar is the specification of what the artifact is — never of what yours must be. Open the exemplar before authoring any surface it models — a step, not a recommendation; per artifact, at authoring time. Then decide freely: adopt, adapt, or depart — the exemplar is a well-built guide from one folder's life, and this folder's diagnostic, profile, and owner govern what is actually built. Where your departure changes a form a reader would notice, say so and why, at the point of the decision. Kit artifacts are starting points to adapt, never to transplant wholesale: the markdown exemplars are fictionalized (real shapes, invented content), the scripts' sample configuration and example content are likewise invented, and the scripts need their paths, conventions, and ignore-lists adapted to the target folder. Scripts destined for the target SmartFolder are copied into its meta folder in Phase 5.

The build (phases — each ends at a review gate)

Phase 0 — Intent. Absorb the user's stated goals and constraints; confirm scope (this folder only, or siblings too?). Touch nothing.

Phase 1 — Explore and report. Walk the tree: folder/file counts, depth, biggest areas, file-type mix, the naming/date conventions actually in use (they may differ per subfolder — honor detected conventions rather than imposing one rule everywhere). Detect existing instruction files (CLAUDE.md, READMEs, AGENTS.md, .claude/) → route to the upgrade path. Flag oddities that change the plan: problem characters, no-extension legacy files, scanned PDFs with no text layer, locked files, mislabeled files. Note synthesis candidates — folders whose files together tell a story — and folders that are mere piles of like items (no greater whole; skip).

The front-door gate — after the look, before any commitment. When this skill fired on a plain organize-request — a folder to organize with no scheme the user has already chosen — do not commit silently to either path. Phase 1's mere-piles skip applies first: twelve holiday photos never hear the offer. Otherwise offer the method, once, in plain terms: "I have to understand this folder to organize it well — want me to write down what I learn while I'm in here, so the next person or session doesn't start over?" The fork is explicit and both paths are nameable — build (continue into Phase 2) or just-organize (do the requested work well and stop). A declined offer deposits nothing: no scaffolding, no marker, no record of the decline — whether to raise it again is ordinary conversational judgment. A request that supplied its own scheme was never this gate's business: execute it, no offer.

Phase 2 — Diagnose and decide. Run the diagnostic interview. Then propose, for the user's approval: the profile (dial readings + the allocation they imply + rationale), the reorganization scope (guides only / group into chapters / full restructure with renaming), the naming convention, and a dry-run plan showing where every folder and loose file lands and which folders get which derived surfaces. While naming is on the table, mention that at close-out the skill will suggest appending SmartFolder to the folder's own outer name (Phase 6 makes the offer) — so it is no surprise later.

Phase 3 — Sample. One chapter end-to-end. Judge it together on whether the guides and any synthesis are genuinely useful — not just present.

Phase 4 — Apply. Execute moves/renames with logging and hash verification; author guides and syntheses from real contents — never auto-fill filler prose. Size the approach to the job: a generator script for scaffolding on large trees (prose in a separate content layer; content-hash markers so re-runs preserve human edits; hand-written guides just carry their as-of line), direct writing on small ones. At scale, fan out parallel sub-agents on disjoint scopes with their own move logs and required integrity reports; keep judgment calls and shared-file writes single-threaded.

Phase 5 — Deposit the infrastructure. The SmartFolder must be self-contained:

• The root CLAUDE.md containing: what this SmartFolder is; the navigation protocol and descent rule; the freshness/precedence rules; the refresh and write-forward rules; the close-the-loop rules below; a grouped Session boundaries section (below); the conventions; a thin top-level orientation (the only thing the root enumerates — one line per chapter); a short maintenance note pointing to the runbook. Write prescriptive content dateless and present-tense; write descriptive content (orientation, state) with as-of dates. A deposited rule states what to do. Where it genuinely depends on a capability, name the capability as a condition and say what happens without it — never let a capability claim stand as the reason for a rule that applies regardless. A rule silent about the environment differing fails in one of two directions: a guarantee quietly lost where the claim is false, or a conditional quietly hardened into a prohibition by the session that met the false branch first. The kit's Example_Root_CLAUDE.md models the shape, not the contents. Dual profile: deposit CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md byte-identical, each carrying the reciprocal instruction. (Bonus, not guarantee: current Claude Code strips HTML comments from CLAUDE.md at injection, so maintainer notes there can be context-free; don't rely on it elsewhere, and never in dual folders.)
• Close the loop — four deposited rules (≤12 root-file lines; procedure detail goes in the runbook). Locality: before finishing, update the derived surfaces in the folders you worked in. The navigation protocol has already put them in front of you, but state the rule anyway — a session editing by absolute path gets no protection from the side effect. The distant-surface list: then check the decay conditions of the named surfaces that sit outside every work area's read path. Build the list with the distant test — does this surface make claims about material that does not sit beside it? — applied to the entire surface inventory this phase just built, and re-applied whenever a surface is added later. A surface describing an external state — what is published, what is installed, what a counterparty holds — is distant by definition: it is falsified by acts performed entirely elsewhere, so no work area's read path ever surfaces it. The list names surfaces, never events: each surface's own decay condition remains the single source of truth for whether it fired; the root list only supplies awareness that the surface exists. Folders where nothing fails the distant test get the two sentences and no list. Reconcile whole: a refresh reconciles the entire surface against present state, not just the section you came for — patching one section is how a stale sentence survives a "refresh." Reconcile-whole keeps a surface accurate; it never asks whether a sentence is warranted — that is the next rule's job. — and this rule takes priority: . Point-in-time state — versions, counts, item lists, statuses — lives on dated status surfaces; a prescriptive file states identity and rules and its state; the root manual in particular never restates what a status surface owns. A stale figure in a dateless file is invisible to every decay mechanism above — the root manual is the worst case, since it auto-loads into every session and survives compaction. The constants that cannot move out (a README describing its own contents, a baseline recording a version) carry a to where the truth is checkable — "three scripts (see the table below)" — which does its real work at edit time, putting the check in front of whoever rewrites the sentence. Annotate only what could not be removed. Once state has moved out, the root file's residual dated content is its as-of line and orientation table, which its close-the-loop wording names. Do not build an event-indexed obligation table ("if X happened, update Y") — that is a central index by another name, and it silently rots when a surface's decay condition changes. Where the closeout — which machinery, if any, runs it at session end — is settled once by the session-boundary prompt below; the deposited wording cites that answer rather than restating it.

Phase 6 — Verify.

• Coverage invariant: every meaningful folder has a _README.md or is explicitly covered by its parent's; no filler guides or unwarranted syntheses crept in.
• Root CLAUDE.md is lean, loads as project instructions, states protocol + precedence + refresh rule; orientation links resolve.
• Every derived surface carries its as-of line, provenance, and a decay condition; flag any derived surface whose sources are newer than its as-of date.
• No derived files inside bundles or trash; internal links resolve; content-hash check against the backup shows no loss; spot-check summaries and syntheses against raw contents.
• Dual profile only: cmp AGENTS.md CLAUDE.md is silent, and a parity probe passes for every agent that will work the folder — plant unguessable content in the root files, ask each agent to quote it back, check for exact match, and give explicit permission to answer "I see none." Never ask an agent to confirm it "has the instructions": a session without them will confabulate a plausible answer rather than report absence.
• The root file's close-the-loop list names exactly the surfaces that fail the locality test — no more, no fewer — swept against the entire surface inventory, with every external-state surface on it by definition; and every listed surface states its own decay condition.
• Prescriptive, dateless files (the root manual, the runbook, deposited READMEs) carry no point-in-time state that a status surface owns; spot-check a sample of the source-pointered constants that remain against their sources — a sample, not an audit; the pointer's real work happens at edit time.
• Sweep the deposited surfaces for capability language — "is blocked", "cannot", "typically can't", "available", and kin. The sweep is a finder, not a verdict: judge each hit — is the capability the rule's genuine precondition (keep it, and it must state its false branch), or the justification for a rule that applies regardless (strike the claim, keep the rule)? It must not fire on legitimate conditionals — dual-profile rules, conditional registers, and degraded modes are correct as written.
• The root's Session boundaries section exists, one line per active duty, each pointing at a procedure file that resolves; the deposited VERSION_BASELINE.md carries the check procedure, both URLs, and the Last checked stamp — and where the folder runs integrity machinery, the baseline is a sanctioned write target.
• The meta folder exists with runbook + recorded profile + growth menu + version baseline; the maintenance loop works without this skill.

At close-out, once — the outer-name suggestion (an offer, deliberately not a verification check — nothing about it is checkable, and a check that always passes trains people to ignore the list): recommend the user append SmartFolder to the folder's own name — Acme Consulting → Acme Consulting SmartFolder — so a built folder is recognizable from outside any session: in a file browser, a backup job, a list of connected folders. A space separates by default; the folder's own separation convention wins (Acme_Consulting → Acme_Consulting_SmartFolder). Skip the offer when the name already ends in the suffix, case-insensitively. The name is the owner's, and any rename happens only on their say-so. In most environments the session cannot rename its own root: the root folder is the handle the environment hands the session, not a file inside the tree, and renaming it mid-session severs the reference the session runs on. There, the offer states both steps, for the owner to carry out between sessions: rename the folder, then re-point whatever holds it under the old name — in Cowork, re-select the folder; in Claude Code, update the project's path; in any other assistant, whatever it uses to locate this folder — or a future session will not find it. Where the environment does let the session rename the root and re-point its own reference safely, it may offer to do that itself — verify the connection afterward, and the two-step instruction above remains the fallback. Offer once; accept a no without argument and do not re-raise in this session; record nothing — the outer name is the owner's, and out of this folder's scope once built.

Existing SmartFolders (the upgrade path)

When Phase 1 detects SmartFolder scaffolding already present — a root CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md, _README.md routers, a meta folder with a runbook or version baseline — this is an upgrade, not a build. Read references/UPGRADE_PATH.md — the full upgrade path, bundled in this package — before proposing anything. It carries the version-against-version review route, the accretion audit, and the standing repairs a session offers because deposited machinery never self-heals (the version check, capability-resting rules, pre-identity flags registers, the growth-menu sentence, the outer-name suffix). The non-negotiables bind on this path too, and the folder's recorded profile — not this skill's defaults — governs unless the user says otherwise.

Working style

Use a task list; keep updates concise; show samples before mass-applying; ask before underspecified work. When new content arrives later, any session should be able to run maintenance from the deposited runbook — add guides for new folders, refresh stale guides and syntheses while preserving manual edits, and re-run the verification steps — without this skill installed.