Useful work lives in the repository
“remember to keep things in this repo, anything that is useful shouldn’t sit
in your temp” (user, 2026-10-04). Useful plans, findings, verification
reports, evidence and continuation notes are versioned repository records in
their existing owners — docs/design/, docs/findings/, docs/trackers/,
docs/decisions/ — never private coordinator state. Private scratch is
staging only: it is never the sole home of a useful record, and a record
that exists only outside the repository does not exist. A user instruction
given in conversation is such a record: it lands in this directory as a
decision, or as a bounded edit to the decision that already states it —
never only in a brief, a tracker line or a chat log — and other documents
cite its id instead of restating it.
The interrupted recovery executed this rule through
RECOVERY-DURABLE-RECORDS: the sealed retention plan and its bound selection
are imported byte-exact as routing inputs, and its small records (plans,
specs, reviews) are versioned under docs/findings/recovery/ and
docs/design/recovery/. As AMENDED on 2026-10-07:
- Raw evidence is kept by content outside git
(EVD-STORE): the
recovery’s raw evidence folder
docs/findings/recovery/evidence/is held in the evidence store, and the repository commits its generated manifest, so every cited path stays verifiable byte for byte. “Exact bytes” is the manifest’s sha256, not a committed copy. - A record another branch of this repository holds is referenced, not copied (UR-16).
- The coordination owner is the
coordinationbranch (UR-22). The 2026-10-04 cutover moved the consolidated coordinator state intodocs/trackers/TASKS.md(after an independent CLEAR-TO-ACTIVATE check); that block is now history, superseded by the coordination branch, and both immutable coordinator records are in the evidence store underdocs/findings/recovery/evidence/coordinator/.
Bounds this rule carries from its neighbors: credentials never become records (D-09); disposable runtime temp roots stay outside the safety floor (D-19); one owner per semantic fact, with this directory the one home of rules and decisions (UR-01); retained tooling lands with its committed artifact (D-20). Importing a record grants no workload, spend or admission; historical evidence is never a supported runtime owner.