| name | flow-next-audit |
| description | Audit .flow/memory/ entries against current code and keep, update, consolidate, replace, delete, or harden each. Use when asked to audit memory or graduate a recurring lesson into a gate. |
| user-invocable | false |
| allowed-tools | Read, Bash, Grep, Glob, Write, Edit, Task |
/flow-next:audit — agent-native memory staleness review
Memory entries decay. A .flow/memory/bug/runtime-errors/ entry logged six months ago might reference a renamed file, a deleted function, or a codepath that no longer exists. Without periodic review, the store accumulates zombie entries and memory-scout surfaces outdated advice.
This skill IS the audit. The host agent (Claude Code / Codex / Droid) walks .flow/memory/, reads each entry, uses Read/Grep/Glob/git to verify references against the current codebase, applies engineering judgment, and decides per entry whether to Keep / Update / Consolidate / Replace / Delete / Harden. Optional autofix mode applies unambiguous actions and marks ambiguous as stale.
Harden is the graduation path: a lesson that keeps getting re-learned and states a mechanically checkable rule should stop riding the context window and become a gate. The audit proposes an artifact in a surface the repo already has — a lint rule, a CI step, or a rule in the substantive CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md — verifies the gate actually fires, and only then demotes the entry to a pointer at it (file stays on disk, provenance intact). Propose-and-confirm by design: gate surfaces are shared repo infrastructure, so Harden never applies unattended.
Decision entries (.flow/memory/knowledge/decisions/) and glossary terms (GLOSSARY.md files at the repo root and on the ancestor chain) are walked alongside the rest of memory. Decisions get a calibrated judging question — "does the constraint that motivated this choice still hold?" — and Replace becomes a two-step supersession (write successor, mark old decision_status: superseded, never git rm). Glossary terms are scanned for code usage; zero-hit terms get a <!-- stale: ... --> HTML comment via Edit tool (no flowctl glossary mark-stale exists), _Avoid_ aliases appearing in code surface as alias-creep findings.
There is no Python audit-engine, no codex/copilot subprocess dispatch, no deterministic scorer. The host agent is already an LLM and does the work directly. flowctl provides only thin persistence plumbing (memory mark-stale, memory mark-fresh, memory mark-hardened, memory search --status). All judgment — is this recurring, is it mechanizable, which gate surface, what should the rule say — stays in this skill; there is no flowctl gate subcommand and never will be.
Read workflow.md for the full phase-by-phase execution. Read phases.md for the 6-outcomes lookup with memory-schema-specific calibration.
Preamble
CRITICAL: flowctl is BUNDLED — NOT installed globally. which flowctl will fail (expected). Define once; subsequent blocks (here and in workflow.md) use $FLOWCTL:
FLOWCTL="${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/scripts/flowctl"
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL="<plugin-root>/scripts/flowctl"
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL=".flow/bin/flowctl"
Inline skill (no context: fork) — plain-text numbered prompt must stay reachable across phases. Subagents can't call plain-text numbered prompts (Claude Code issues #12890, #34592). Phase 3 (Ask) and Phase 6 (Discoverability check) both require user choice in interactive mode.
Mode Detection
Parse $ARGUMENTS for the literal token mode:autofix. If present, strip it from the arguments — the remainder is the scope hint.
RAW_ARGS="$ARGUMENTS"
MODE="interactive"
if [[ "$RAW_ARGS" == *"mode:autofix"* ]]; then
MODE="autofix"
SCOPE_HINT=$(printf "%s" "$RAW_ARGS" | sed 's/mode:autofix//' | tr -s ' ' | sed 's/^ //;s/ $//')
else
SCOPE_HINT="$RAW_ARGS"
fi
| Mode | When | Behavior |
|---|
| Interactive (default) | User is at the terminal | Ask decisions on ambiguous cases via plain-text numbered prompt; confirm batched actions; run discoverability check with consent |
Autofix (mode:autofix in arguments) | Ralph or batch usage | No user questions. Apply Keep/Update/Consolidate/auto-Delete/Replace-with-sufficient-evidence directly. Mark ambiguous as stale. Print the full report. Discoverability surfaces as a recommendation, not an edit |
Autofix mode rules
- No user questions. Never call the plain-text numbered prompt.
- Process all entries in scope. No scope-narrowing question. If no scope hint was provided, process every categorized entry.
- Attempt all safe actions. Keep (no-op), Update (write tool), Consolidate (merge +
git rm subsumed), auto-Delete (only when code AND problem domain both gone), Replace (only with sufficient evidence to write a trustworthy successor).
- Never apply Harden. Classify and report Harden candidates (and un-graduation proposals) under Recommended with full detail — gate type, draft artifact, evidence, the
--gate-ref that would be recorded — but write no artifact and demote no entry.
- Mark ambiguous as stale. When classification is genuinely ambiguous (Update vs Replace vs Consolidate vs Delete) or Replace evidence is insufficient, run
flowctl memory mark-stale <id> --reason "..." instead of guessing. Stale-marking writes are atomic and round-trip safe.
- Conservative confidence. Borderline cases get marked stale; never deleted on autofix.
- Always print the full report. The report is the sole deliverable — there is no user to ask follow-ups.
Interaction Principles (interactive mode only)
In autofix mode, skip user questions entirely and apply the rules above.
In interactive mode, follow these principles:
Ask the user via plain text. Render the options below as a numbered list 1. … N., followed by a final option N+1. Other — type your own answer. Print the question, then the numbered list, then stop and wait for the user's next message before continuing. Parse the reply as: a bare number 1–N+1 → that option; the literal text of an option label → that option; free text after Other → custom answer.
- Ask one question at a time via
plain-text numbered prompt. Never silently skip the question.
- Prefer multiple choice when natural options exist.
- Lead with the recommended option and a one-sentence rationale.
- Do not ask the user to make decisions before evidence is gathered — Phase 1 investigates first, Phase 3 asks.
- Group obvious Keeps and obvious Updates together for batched confirmation. Present Consolidate / Replace / Delete one at a time.
The goal is automated maintenance with human oversight on judgment calls — not a question for every finding.
Forbidden
- Auditing legacy flat files (
.flow/memory/pitfalls.md, conventions.md, decisions.md at the memory root). Skip with a warning that recommends $flow-next-memory-migrate first. Report includes the skipped count.
- Auditing under
_audit/, _review/, or any other _* directory under .flow/memory/.
- Deleting silently. Delete is reserved for unambiguous cases (code gone AND problem domain gone). Default to Replace or Consolidate when there's still value to preserve.
git rm on superseded decision entries. Decision history stays on disk. Replace for knowledge/decisions/ entries means write a new entry and mark the old decision_status: superseded with superseded_by: <new-id> — never delete the old file.- Deleting glossary terms. When a term has zero code hits, mark stale via Edit-tool HTML comment. Removing the term entry is the operator's call, surfaced in the report.
- Auto-applying Harden. In
mode:autofix (and therefore any pilot / Ralph invocation) Harden never applies: no gate artifact is written, no entry is demoted, no un-graduation is executed. Candidates surface under Recommended only. Graduation edits files outside .flow/memory/ — lint config, CI, CLAUDE.md — and silent edits to shared repo infrastructure from an autonomous sweep are unacceptable. Audit proposes; a human accepts.
- Demoting a lesson to a gate that was never verified to fire.
memory mark-hardened runs only after the gate is confirmed live (resolved lint config / a job that actually runs / the substantive instruction file). Verification failure leaves the entry active and reports a failed graduation. A gate that does not fire is worse than no gate.
git rm on Harden. Ever, on any track. The entry file stays on disk as a pointer at the gate — that is what keeps "why does this rule exist?" answerable.- Scaffolding infrastructure to host a gate. Never create a linter setup, a CI pipeline, or a config file that does not already exist. The gate lands in a surface the repo already has, degrades to the substantive instruction file, or the entry stays Keep.
- Inventing flowctl subcommands beyond what ships (
memory mark-stale, memory mark-fresh, memory mark-hardened, memory search --status). There is no flowctl gate subcommand — the gate artifact is skill-authored prose/config written via Edit/Write. fn-38 task 2 ships only glossary {add,list,read,remove} — there is no flowctl glossary mark-stale; use Edit tool. Use Write tool + git for moves and deletes.
- Mass-renaming code from a glossary alias-creep finding. The audit reports file:line locations and stops there; code rename is the operator's call.
- Auto-committing without user awareness in interactive mode. Phase 5 detects git context and asks. Autofix uses sensible defaults.
- Setting
context: fork — plain-text numbered prompt must stay reachable.
- Running parallel replacement subagents. Investigation subagents can run in parallel for 3+ independent entries; replacement subagents run sequentially to protect orchestrator context.
Workflow
Execute the phases in workflow.md in order:
- Discover & Triage — walk
.flow/memory/{bug,knowledge}/<category>/, group by module / category, count, choose interaction path (focused / batch / broad), skip legacy + _* directories with a counted warning. knowledge/decisions/ entries are picked up automatically by the same glob.
0.5 Glossary scan — enumerate GLOSSARY.md files via flowctl glossary list --json; per term, grep tracked code for the term and each _Avoid_ alias (case-insensitive whole-word, normalized whitespace); zero hits + zero alias hits → mark stale via Edit tool (HTML comment after the term heading); alias hits → surface as alias-creep finding for Phase 3 (interactive) or report (autofix); skip husk files (count: 0) with a single advisory.
0.75 Change-detection pre-filter — pre-scan recurrence artifacts (## Update heading count, entry-file commit count, related_to size) BEFORE the auto-Keep decision, so a recurrence-qualified entry reaches Phase 1 even when its module is unchanged; hardened entries get a cheap gate-liveness check instead of re-investigation.
- Investigate — per entry: read frontmatter + body, verify referenced files / symbols / modules against current code via Read / Grep / Glob, check git log in the area, form Keep / Update / Consolidate / Replace / Delete / Harden recommendation with 2-4 evidence bullets and confidence. For 3+ independent entries, dispatch parallel investigation subagents (read-only). Decision entries use the calibrated judging question — "does the constraint still hold?" — see phases.md §Decision-entry calibration.
1.75 Cross-doc analysis — compare entries sharing module / category for overlap (problem, solution, root cause, files), supersession (newer canonical entry covers older narrower precursor), contradictions.
- Classify — apply phases.md decision criteria and the outcome-precedence rule (correctness > Consolidate > Harden). For Replace, verify evidence is sufficient to write a trustworthy successor; mark stale otherwise. For decision entries, Replace = supersede (write new entry; mark old
decision_status: superseded, superseded_by: <new-id>; never git rm the old). Harden requires a recurrence signal AND mechanizability, and passes the duplication guard first.
- Ask — interactive only; autofix skips. Group obvious Keeps + Updates → confirm batch. Present Consolidate / Replace / non-auto-Delete individually. Present each Harden candidate individually with gate type, draft artifact, evidence bullets, and accept / different-gate-type / decline. Surface glossary alias-creep findings per alias. Lead with recommendation. One question at a time.
- Execute — Keep: no edit. Update: agent edits frontmatter / body via Write tool, preserving unknown fields (a retrieval-fix placement move is a
git mv into the new category directory first, then that edit on the moved file). Consolidate: merge unique content into canonical, git rm subsumed. Replace: write new entry, git rm old (decisions: write new + edit old's frontmatter to mark superseded, never git rm). Delete: git rm (only when code AND problem domain both gone). Harden: write the artifact, verify the gate fires, then flowctl memory mark-hardened <id> --gate-ref "<path>#<rule-id> -- <note>" — never git rm; verification failure leaves the entry active. Glossary stale: Edit comment after term heading. Ambiguous in autofix: flowctl memory mark-stale.
- Report + Commit — print Kept / Updated / Consolidated / Replaced / Deleted / Hardened / Marked-stale / Skipped counts plus per-entry detail and a Glossary section (Kept / Marked stale / Alias-creep / Husks). Detect git context (current branch, dirty tree). Interactive: ask commit options. Autofix: branch-and-PR on main, commit on feature branch, stage only audit-modified files.
- Discoverability check — verify the substantive CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md (the one not just
@-including the other) mentions .flow/memory/ with schema basics (track / category / module / tags / status) and when to consult. Add a minimal line if missing — interactive asks consent, autofix surfaces as recommendation.
Output rules
The full report is the deliverable — print it as markdown to stdout. Do not summarize internally and emit a one-liner.
Host command form: print every copy-pasteable flow-next command here in the spelling this host invokes — the flat /flow-next-<name> form when the resolved plugin root carries .flow-next-opencode-manifest (an OpenCode install — the same signal setup's host detection uses); on any other or indeterminate host, exactly as spelled here.
Report structure (see workflow.md §5 for full schema):
Memory Audit Summary
====================
Scanned: N entries
Skipped legacy: M (run `$flow-next-memory-migrate` first to make these auditable)
Kept: X
Updated: Y (of which retrieval fixes: RF)
Consolidated: C
Replaced: Z
Deleted: W
Hardened: H (failed graduations: HF; un-graduated: HU)
Marked stale: S
Glossary
--------
Files scanned: F (H husks)
Terms scanned: T
Kept: K_g
Marked stale: S_g
Alias-creep flagged: A_g
Then per-entry detail (id, classification, evidence, action taken). For Consolidate: which entry was canonical, what unique content was merged, what was deleted. For Replace: what the old entry recommended vs what current code does, path to successor (decision Replace also notes the old entry now carries decision_status: superseded). For Marked stale: why ambiguous. For Harden: gate type, artifact path, --gate-ref, and how the gate was verified live (a failed graduation names the reason and states the entry was left active). For glossary terms: only stale + alias-creep cases get per-term lines (Keep is silent); husks get a one-line advisory each.
Autofix mode splits actions into Applied (writes succeeded) and Recommended (writes failed — e.g. permission denied — plus every Harden candidate, which autofix never attempts). The structure is the same; only the bucket differs.
