global-docs

name	global-docs
description	Global requirements for Markdown documentation timestamps and review processes. Activate this skill when creating, modifying, or reviewing markdown files.

Global Documentation Timestamps Rule

Objective: Ensure that all markdown documents across all projects maintain a consistent "Last Updated" and "Last Reviewed" timestamp footer to track documentation decay and relevance.

Rules:

1. Every time you create or modify a Markdown (.md) file, you MUST ensure it has a footer block at the very end in the exact format: <!-- markdownlint-disable MD049 --> --- *Last Updated: YYYY-MM-DD* | *Last Reviewed: YYYY-MM-DD*
2. If working in a new repository without these footers, implement a Python script named scripts/append_timestamps.py using Path.rglob to recursively scan all .md files (ignoring .venv, node_modules, .smoke_venv etc.) and append this block if it does not exist.
3. You must also establish a scripts/check_docs_review.py script that parses this footer using the regex r"\*Last Updated: ([\d\-]+)\* \| \*Last Reviewed: ([\d\-]+)\*" and accepts arguments for --max-review-days, --max-update-days, and --max-gap-days.
4. The script should alert the user via sys.exit(1) if any documents have exceeded these threshold values.

Documentation Review Requirements (Active Rule)

5. Post-Implementation Review: After implementing any code or feature change, you MUST review the project documentation to see if updates are needed. Note that a single code change may require updates to multiple documents (e.g., README.md, architecture.md, spec.md).
6. Timestamp Updates:
   • If no changes are needed but you reviewed a document to verify this, you MUST update its Last Reviewed date.
   • If an update is required, you MUST update both the Last Reviewed and Last Updated dates to reflect the fact the documentation was reviewed and updated.
7. New Documentation: If no documentation exists around the implemented change and it makes sense to document it, you MUST create a new document for it unless it can be logically added as a new section to an existing document.

If you ever ask the AI to "review the project documentation for outdated files", it will automatically know to look for or construct these scripts.

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Last Updated: 2026-07-19 | Last Reviewed: 2026-07-19