housekeeping

housekeeping is a command for Claude Code from marciopuga/cog. It costs 37 tokens per session (1,527 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command for maintaining a plain-text memory folder used by an AI agent. It archives old notes, removes stale items, rebuilds indexes, and checks the required file format.

In plain words
What is it for?
Run it during regular maintenance to review recent memory files, archive oversized observation or task lists, and record the maintenance run.
Why use it?
It keeps stored memories manageable and avoids spending time processing empty or unchanged files.

Command for Claude Code

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/marciopuga/cog/housekeeping
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/marciopuga/cog

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for housekeeping

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/marciopuga/cog/housekeeping.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/marciopuga/cog/housekeeping)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/marciopuga/cog/housekeeping"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/marciopuga/cog/housekeeping.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 37 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,527 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00037 $0.01527
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00763
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00305
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00153

Measured 5d ago against content hash c5f212fb87ae, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

housekeeping scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/commands/housekeeping.md · 169 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 169 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cog Housekeeping

Memory maintenance — archive, prune, index, enforce format. The janitor.

Memory Path

All files under the resolved memory path: $COG_HOME/memory/ if COG_HOME is set, otherwise ~/cog/memory/.

Orientation (run first)

Scope your work:

  1. Find files changed since the last run — read memory/cog-meta/run-log.md for the last /housekeeping entry and scope to files modified since that date (no entry → default to the last 7 days)
  2. Check observation entry counts (>50 = archive threshold)
  3. Check completed action item counts (>10 = archive threshold)

Only read files that need work. Skip unchanged files.

Minimum Data Check

Before proceeding, verify there's enough material to maintain:

  • If no observations files exist or all are empty: stop. Say "Nothing to maintain yet. Start by capturing some observations and the system will grow."
  • If all entry counts are well below thresholds (obs < 10, items < 3): say "Memory is still light. No maintenance needed yet — keep building."

Don't run a full pipeline over an empty system. Acknowledge and exit early.

Process

1. Garbage Collect

Archive stale data per glacier rules. All glacier files need YAML frontmatter.

Observations — archive by primary tag:

  • Any observations.md >50 entries → group oldest by primary tag → glacier/{domain}/observations-{tag}.md

Other files:

  • action-items.md >10 completed → glacier/{domain}/action-items-done.md
  • entities.md inactive 6+ months → glacier/{domain}/entities-inactive.md

2. Prune Hot Memory

Keep ALL hot-memory.md files under 50 lines.

Pruning priority:

  1. Resolved items (strikethrough, "DONE", "RESOLVED")
  2. Past events (dates already occurred)
  3. SSOT violations (same fact in hot-memory AND canonical file)
  4. Stale entries (not referenced 14+ days)
  5. Low-signal entries (FYI with no action or deadline)

Where trimmed entries go:

  • Lasting value → append to observations.md
  • Purely historical → let them go
  • Never silently delete — move or note in debrief

Read the full file on GitHub · 169 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 169 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A c5f212fb87ae

Subscribe to this mod's changes

housekeeping is a command published in the GitHub repository marciopuga/cog (376 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,527 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.