| name | curate |
| description | Use when user says "curate", "prune", "cleanup the vault", "retire stale notes", "wyczyść bazę". Scores notes for staleness/isolation/dead-links/duplication, writes a triage report, and on confirmation moves retired notes to _graveyard/. |
CURATE
When to use
Trigger phrases: "curate", "prune", "cleanup", "retire stale notes", "wyczyść bazę".
The user wants a hygiene sweep that proposes (and, on confirmation, executes)
reversible retirement of stale/unused content. Recommended cadence: quarterly.
/lint diagnoses; /curate treats. This skill is action-oriented but every
mutation is gated on explicit user confirmation. Nothing is ever git rm'd.
Workflow
Phase 1 — Gather (read-only)
- Read
content/_indexes/vault-map.md, catalog.md, graph.md (Navigation
Protocol — never grep all of content/). If any index is missing/stale, run
/reindex first.
- For each note collect: frontmatter
date and agent-reviewed; git last-touched
date via git log -1 --format=%cs -- <path>. Use the most recent of these as
the "last touched" date.
- Parse graph edges with
curate_score.parse_graph(open("content/_indexes/graph.md").read()) to get
per-note (in_edges, out_edges).
Phase 2 — Score
For every note compute age_days = curate_score.days_since(last_touched, today)
then score, reasons = curate_score.score_note(age_days, in_edges, out_edges, dead_link).
dead_link starts False. Only run live checks on the flagged subset — notes
that already have age_points>0 or isolation_points>0, prioritising tool notes.
For those, extract the source:/repo URL and run
python .claude/skills/curate/scripts/curate_links.py <url> .... A "dead"
result sets dead_link=True; "unverified" leaves it False and is noted as
unverified in the report (never auto-flag on a network error).- Detect duplication/superseded: if a newer
compiled-note (or newer note with the
same topic per catalog summaries) covers the same ground, set has_superseder=True
for the older note.
action = curate_score.recommend_action(score, dead_link, has_superseder).
Phase 3 — Triage report
Write content/_outputs/reports/YYYY-MM-DD_curate.md. Group candidates by
recommended action (archive, merge, refresh, keep). For each: note path,
score, signals fired (reasons), recommended action, one-line rationale, and any
unverified flags. Print summary counts per action to the user. This report is
the dry-run; produce it before any mutation.
Phase 4 — Execute (only after explicit user confirmation)
Present the grouped candidates and ask the user to confirm which actions to run.
Then, per confirmed note:
- archive → move the file to
content/_graveyard/ preserving its folder name as
a prefix if needed to avoid collisions; preserve all frontmatter and add
archived: YYYY-MM-DD and archived-reason: "<reasons joined>". Repair or stub
inbound wikilinks (delegate to /refactor link-repair).
- merge → delegate to
/refactor (merge into the superseding note; it repairs
wikilinks).
- refresh → delegate to
/enhance (re-verify and update the note in place).
- keep → no action.
After mutations, update all three indexes per CLAUDE.md auto-update rules (remove
archived notes from counts, catalog entries, graph nodes/edges). Optionally run
npx quartz build to confirm the build still succeeds.
Safety
- Mutation is gated on explicit confirmation. Default is the dry-run report.
- Reversible: retirement = move to
_graveyard/ (build-excluded). Restore by moving
the file back to its topic folder.
- Network errors / blocked status codes are
unverified, never dead.
- Never modify
.obsidian/, the quartz/ engine dir, or .github/.
See also
- CLAUDE.md "Navigation Protocol" — read on every operation before this workflow.
/reindex — rebuilds indexes if missing or stale. Run before curate if needed./lint — passive diagnosis. /refactor — merge + wikilink repair. /enhance — refresh.
