Godmode Memory Gardener

Outcome

The archive a later session inherits is pruned by rule, not by feel: the session is told as dated prose, duplicates and contradictions are named and superseded on the record, expiry is previewed before it runs, and a lesson graduates only through a promotion that cites its evidence and an approval from a second actor.

Use

• A session is closing (or idle) and its episodes should be summarised before the next one starts.
• Lessons or decisions have piled up near-duplicated or contradicting one another.
• Old episodes crowd the brief and the forgetting pass has not run in a while.
• A cluster of correction candidates has recurred enough to promote, and the promotion needs a cited rationale.

Do Not Use

• Resuming work at the start of a session, or rebuilding a lost context brief - that is godmode-continuity.
• Erasing a leaked credential from an archived record - that is expunge, previewed through godmode-governance.
• Following the compiled code of law before a new task - that is godmode-code-of-law.

Deterministic Execution Flow

1. Tell the session first. godmode digest --since <first seq of this session> - the archive told as dated prose, assembled verbatim from record fields; it writes nothing. Everything after this step is judged against what actually happened, not against memory of it.
2. List what duplicates or contradicts. godmode hygiene --cap 80 - near-duplicate and contradicting lessons and decisions as a review list; it proposes, never retires.
3. Name carried obligations a later handoff made moot. godmode checkpoint --review - reports; it closes nothing.
4. Preview expiry before it runs. godmode forget --dry-run - performs every read a real pass would and records nothing: which episodes would move to the cold tier, which supersession chains exist, which same-subject values contradict. A record cited by a live claim, a checkpoint, a law guard or a pin never expires.
   • Only after reading the preview, run the real pass: godmode forget. A preview that names a record you still need means fix the citation first, never skip the preview.
5. Supersede a duplicate on the record. godmode remember --kind <same kind> --subject "<subject>" --value "<the merged value>" --supersedes <older seq> - same kind only, and never for an incident or pattern (they carry their own evolution). The older record stays in the chain; readers stop treating it as current.
6. Cluster promotion candidates. godmode law candidates - correction candidates clustered by keyword, with recurrence counts across sessions.
7. Promote with a cited rationale. godmode lessons promote <lesson seq> --cite seq:<evidence> --rerun-hash <sha256 of a held-out re-run> - refused naming any missing structured field.
   • The approval is a different actor's pass: godmode lessons approve <promotion seq> --rerun-hash <sha256 of that checker's own re-run>, refused when the approver is the promoter or the re-run hash repeats the promotion's own.
8. Close the loop. godmode checkpoint --summary "<what was gardened>" --status "<state left>" --next "<next action>" --evidence seq:<digest start> - the next session reads this instead of re-deriving the pass.

Read PURPOSE.md for the archive records this skill exists to close.

Must Not

• Never run godmode forget before godmode forget --dry-run in the same pass; an expiry you did not preview is an expiry you cannot explain.
• Never delete, move or hand-edit a file under the archive's state directory; supersede on the record instead, so the chain stays verifiable.
• Never approve your own promotion; the approval must come from a second actor with its own re-run.
• Never use expunge to tidy a duplicate; it exists for leaked secrets and leaves a tombstone.
• Never supersede across kinds, or supersede an incident or pattern; instead retire the stale record within its own kind, and leave incidents and patterns as history.

Acceptance

• godmode forget --dry-run names what a real pass would expire, and the archive's record count is unchanged by it.
• A duplicate is superseded with --supersedes, and a promotion carries a cite and a second actor's approval.

If an assertion cannot be proved, report the unmet assertion and the next safe action rather than the outcome it was meant to prove.