| name | artifact-resurfacing |
| description | Four-phase protocol for clearing accumulated drift between memory claims, CLAUDE.md citations, and on-disk reality. Detects stale citations, missing files, and orphan plans; classifies findings; emits proposed diffs; codifies prevention. Companion to closeout (closeout discovers orphans; this skill polishes them). Discovery ≠ remediation — Phase 3 emits proposed diffs only; constitutional doc edits require explicit conductor authorization. |
| license | MIT |
| complexity | intermediate |
| time_to_learn | 30min |
| tier | core |
| tags | ["drift-reconciliation","memory-hygiene","citation-audit","orphan-recovery","hall-monitor","propose-not-apply"] |
| inputs | ["domain-scope-or-claude-md-path","cross-scope-memory-files","relevant-claude-plans"] |
| outputs | ["drift-finding-table","proposed-edit-diffs","polish-log-md","irf-row-proposals"] |
| side_effects | ["reads-filesystem","creates-files"] |
| triggers | ["user-says-resurface-buried-artifacts","user-says-buried-bodies","user-says-stale-citations","user-says-memory-drift","user-says-future-fix","closeout-surfaced-three-or-more-orphans","claude-md-cited-path-test-f-fails"] |
| complements | ["closeout","cross-agent-handoff","consolidate-memory","qa-audit","ecosystem-autopsy"] |
| governance_phases | ["frame","shape"] |
| governance_norm_group | repo-hygiene |
| organ_affinity | ["all"] |
Artifact Resurfacing
Open the drift on the table. Surface the buried artifacts — stale citations, missing referenced files, orphan plans, cross-scope memory entries pointing at paths that moved. Polish them in proposal form. Codify the lesson so the next session does not have to re-discover the same drift.
Authority boundary (read first)
This skill is propose-not-apply for any constitutional surface. It produces drift tables, edit diffs, and IRF row proposals. It does not commit edits to CLAUDE.md, MEMORY.md, governance-rules.json, registry-v2.json, or any seed.yaml without explicit conductor authorization in the same session.
- Closure for plans — defer to
closeout. This skill does not assign DONE-NNN / IRF-XXX-NNN labels; it surfaces orphans for closeout's classifier.
- Memory operations — defer to
consolidate-memory for memory file mutations. This skill emits proposed memory diffs.
- Cross-session continuity — defer to
cross-agent-handoff. This skill writes the polish-log entry; handoff carries it forward.
- Verification of claimed transitions — defer to
qa-audit.
Discovery ≠ remediation. The skill finds and proposes. The conductor applies.
When to use
- "Resurface buried artifacts in "
- "Find stale citations in this CLAUDE.md"
- "Reconcile memory drift between scopes"
- "Audit this domain for orphans"
- "Polish referenced-but-missing files"
- "Future-fix this so it doesn't drift again"
- Closeout has surfaced ≥3 follow-ups whose root cause is drift between memory and disk
- A
MEMORY.md walkback flags ≥1 stale path citation
- A
find for a CLAUDE.md-cited path returns zero results
Four-phase protocol
Phase 1 — Detect
Enumerate the domain's surface. For a target CLAUDE.md or MEMORY.md, extract every:
- File path (absolute or
~/-anchored)
- Function/script identifier (
foo.py, bar(), --flag)
- Issue/ledger ID (
IRF-XXX-NNN, DONE-NNN, GH#123)
- External reference (URL, package name, doc anchor)
- Plan filename (any
~/.claude/plans/*.md referenced by path)
Run the citation audit:
bash scripts/audit-citations.sh <path-to-CLAUDE.md>
The script emits one JSONL record per citation: {cited, kind, exists, found_at, status}. A path is present if test -f (or test -d) succeeds. It is stale if a different path on disk holds the same canonical content (e.g., the institution moved from ~/Workspace/... to ~/Code/...). It is missing if no candidate path holds the artifact.
Run the orphan-plan scan:
bash scripts/find-orphan-plans.sh [glob]
Default glob is ~/.claude/plans/*.md. Output: one JSONL record per plan, with {path, mtime, has_done_ref, has_irf_ref, has_delivered_research_marker}. Plans lacking all three markers are orphan candidates.
Surface a four-column finding table to the user before classifying:
| artifact | cited-at | status | candidate-action |
|---|
| ... | ... | present | stale | missing | orphan | (proposed action, no execution yet) |
Phase 2 — Classify
For each finding, assign one class:
- Present — no action.
- Stale-citation — the artifact exists on disk; the citation points at the wrong path. Polishable via citation rewrite.
- Missing-but-probably-never-written — citation appears to run ahead of an unwritten artifact (e.g., a paper title cited with no draft, no commit history, no cross-scope mention). Polishable via citation annotation (
(planned — not yet written, YYYY-MM-DD)) rather than reconstruction.
- Missing-but-lost — citation points at an artifact whose creation history exists somewhere (a session transcript, an old commit, a cross-scope memory file) but the artifact itself is gone. Polishable via deep search; if search fails, propose reconstruction-from-context or citation removal.
- Orphan-plan — pass through to
closeout's classifier (EXECUTED / IN-PROGRESS / ABANDONED / DELIVERED-RESEARCH). This skill does not assign closure labels.
For ambiguous classifications, surface the finding to the conductor and stop. Universal Rule #21 ("Do what is asked — never preempt") applies.
See references/buried-bodies-taxonomy.md for the full taxonomy with worked examples.
Phase 3 — Polish (propose, do not apply)
For each classified finding, generate a polish artifact. Never write directly to constitutional files. Emit diffs and proposals instead.
For stale citations, run the proposer:
python3 scripts/propose-citation-fix.py \
--file <path-to-CLAUDE.md-or-memory-file> \
--stale-path <wrong-path> \
--canonical-path <correct-path>
Output: a unified diff to stdout. The conductor reviews and applies (or rejects) the diff via Edit. The script never writes the file itself.
For missing-probably-never-written, emit a one-line annotation diff:
- See ~/path/to/cited-but-missing.md for details.
+ See ~/path/to/cited-but-missing.md for details (planned — not yet written as of YYYY-MM-DD).
For missing-but-lost, emit the deep-search command set first:
find /Users/4jp -name "<artifact-name>*" 2>/dev/null | grep -v node_modules
grep -rl "<artifact-keyword>" ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/*.md 2>/dev/null
grep -rl "<artifact-keyword>" ~/Code/organvm/praxis-perpetua/prompt-corpus/ 2>/dev/null
If the search returns hits, the finding reclassifies as stale-citation and the citation-fix proposer runs. If the search returns zero hits across the deep corpus, the finding reclassifies as probably-never-written and the annotation diff applies.
For orphan plans, hand the plan path to closeout with a classification request. Do not move plans to abandoned/ from this skill — closeout owns that decision.
See references/constitutional-doc-policy.md for the full rule set on what may/may not be auto-edited.
Phase 4 — Codify (future-fix)
Polishing one drift instance is tactical. Codifying so the next drift self-corrects is strategic.
For each polished finding, append an entry to a polish-log.md in the affected repo's root (create if absent):
## YYYY-MM-DD — <one-line summary>
- **Artifact**: <cited-path-or-id>
- **Class**: stale-citation | missing-never-written | missing-lost | orphan-plan
- **Finding**: <what was wrong>
- **Action**: <what was proposed; "applied" or "deferred-to-conductor">
- **Authorization**: <session-id-and-approver, or "pending">
- **Codification**: <what's been added to prevent recurrence, or "none yet">
Then check for compound patterns:
- Same stale citation in ≥2 scopes — propose updating the workspace
CLAUDE.md autogen footer (under <!-- ORGANVM:AUTO:START --> sentinels) to assert the canonical path. The next organvm refresh will re-write it, making the truth periodic rather than ad-hoc.
- Same orphan-plan class in ≥5 plans — propose adding a detector clause to
closeout's SKILL.md so the class is auto-recognized in future sessions.
- Cross-scope memory drift — propose a
reference_<topic>_canonical_path.md memory at the workspace scope so all sibling scopes can grep-find one truth.
Emit one IRF row proposal per unresolved finding (Universal Rule #1: N/A = vacuum). Format:
- id: IRF-<DOMAIN>-<NNN>
title: "<artifact>: <class> drift surfaced in session <id>"
status: open
domain: <domain-code>
surfaced_by: artifact-resurfacing
resurfacing_session: <session-id-or-date>
action_required: <one line>
authorization_required_from: conductor
The IRF row is a proposal. Writing it into INST-INDEX-RERUM-FACIENDARUM.md requires conductor authorization (Universal Rule #21).
What this skill explicitly does NOT do
- Edit
CLAUDE.md, MEMORY.md, governance-rules.json, registry-v2.json, or any seed.yaml without same-session conductor authorization
- Assign DONE-NNN or IRF-XXX-NNN closure labels (that's
closeout's job)
- Move plans to
~/.claude/plans/abandoned/ (also closeout's job)
- Auto-reconstruct missing artifacts from context (proposes reconstruction; conductor authorizes)
- Run as a background daemon, cron, or LaunchAgent (Universal Rule #9 — HARD RULE)
- Walk a domain it was not asked to walk (scope visibility principle, memory rule #39)
- Batch-close orphan plans (memory rule #53)
Scripts
scripts/audit-citations.sh — citation audit; emits {cited, kind, exists, found_at, status} JSONLscripts/find-orphan-plans.sh — orphan-plan scan; emits {path, mtime, has_done_ref, has_irf_ref, has_delivered_research_marker} JSONLscripts/propose-citation-fix.py — propose-only unified diff for stale citation rewrites
References
references/buried-bodies-taxonomy.md — the four classes with worked examples from this skill's genesis sessionreferences/composition-with-closeout.md — how this skill chains with /closeout (closeout discovers; this polishes)references/constitutional-doc-policy.md — the propose-not-apply rule set
Examples
examples/2026-05-17-praxis-perpetua-resurfacing.md — the genesis case: praxis-perpetua moved from ~/Workspace/meta-organvm/ to ~/Code/organvm/, leaving stale citations in pipeline CLAUDE.md + memory and three referenced-but-missing 2026-03-15 papers. The session that built this skill is the case study.
Anti-patterns
- Treating Phase 1 detection as license to Phase 3 polish without conductor sign-off
- Editing the pipeline
CLAUDE.md "Academic & Institutional Context" block in the same session that discovered it was stale (discovery ≠ remediation — surface, do not silently fix)
- Inventing the canonical path when ≥2 candidates exist on disk (ask the conductor which is truth)
- Treating cross-scope memory entries as fungible — each scope has its own
MEMORY.md, each is independently mutable, all need their own proposed-diff
- Running on a domain the conductor did not name — buried-body hunting is invited, not autonomous
- Calling this skill's findings "fixed" when only the propose-diff has been emitted
Universal rules this skill is built around
- Universal Rule #1 — N/A is a vacuum. Every unresolved finding becomes an IRF row proposal.
- Universal Rule #2 — Nothing local only. The skill source pushes to remote; polish-log entries commit.
- Universal Rule #6 — Fix bases, not outputs. Phase 4's "codify" leg adds the prevention to the source (autogen sentinel, closeout SKILL.md, canonical-path memory), not to the symptom.
- Universal Rule #8 — Plans are versioned, never overwritten. Orphan-plan reclassification emits
-v2 revisions when polish requires content change.
- Universal Rule #9 — No LaunchAgents. Audit is on-demand only.
- Universal Rule #12 — Memory is hypothesis. Every claim re-verified against current disk state before being acted on. This skill's Phase 1 is the operationalization of #12.
Why this exists
Drift between memory claims, CLAUDE.md citations, and on-disk reality is the entropy of a multi-session, multi-scope, multi-repo workflow. Sessions name artifacts; artifacts move; sessions end; memory persists the old name; the next session re-discovers the same drift. Without a ritual, drift compounds until the system's self-description no longer matches the system.
The genesis session (2026-05-17) found four classes of drift in one domain (the institutional-authority / SGO / praxis-perpetua surface). Closeout caught the four as "follow-ups"; this skill exists to give those follow-ups a protocol instead of an ad-hoc fix-or-defer decision.
Pairs with closeout (which surfaces) and consolidate-memory (which prunes). Three skills, one entropy regime.
Related
~/.claude/plans/where-on-my-local-enchanted-meerkat.md — genesis plan, Phase 2 section~/.claude/plans/closeout-2026-05-17-plugin-surface-reconciliation.md — genesis closeout~/.claude/plans/2026-05-17-handoff-plugin-surface-reconciliation.md — genesis handoffreferences/buried-bodies-taxonomy.md, references/composition-with-closeout.md, references/constitutional-doc-policy.md
