Repository Text Hygiene

Establish the cause of text drift before modifying files or configuration.

1. Inspect repository guidance, .gitattributes, .editorconfig, formatter rules, hooks, and CI. Inspect only relevant Git settings and their origins; avoid dumping unrelated configuration that may contain credentials. Compare status, unstaged and staged diffs, and numstat; inspect attributes for representative paths. A large status count does not authorize normalization.
2. Separate real edits, intentional generated changes, line-ending differences, and index/stat noise. Compare a suspicious path's index blob with its filtered working-tree hash, using git hash-object --path for that same path. Equality supports refreshing that path's index metadata; it does not prove the entire worktree is safe to stage. Preserve staged/unstaged boundaries and user work.
3. Keep encoding and line-ending policy in repository configuration. Prefer UTF-8 without BOM and LF for text when establishing a policy, but inspect platform entry points, binary files, raw-byte fixtures, and digest contracts first. Respect required exceptions. Align editor, formatter, and Git attributes rather than repeatedly rewriting files or changing global Git defaults. Use non-mutating CI checks and explicit formatter application.
4. Repair only diagnosed paths within scope. Never use git reset --hard, broad checkout/restore, or git clean to clear status noise. Refresh the index only for individually verified byte-equivalent paths. Reserve bulk renormalization for an isolated change with unrelated work preserved, reviewed attributes, and the complete normalization diff inspected. Do not stage unrelated changes.
5. Verify remaining status against actual diffs and intentional untracked files, inspect staged changes, and recheck representative bytes and attributes. Run git diff --check, applicable formatter checks, and affected build or digest checks. Refresh the IDE view if it still disagrees with Git; report unresolved discrepancies rather than rewriting files to make the display quiet.

Use documentation-hygiene for document ownership and lifecycle. This procedure does not choose a repository's language, directory layout, release policy, or global tool configuration.