harvest-knowledge

harvest-knowledge

⚠️ Tool-managed skill provided by agent-memory (provenance: agent-memory-builtin). Don't edit it in place — it is overwritten on upgrade. To change behavior: fork it under a new skill name, or upstream a genuine fix to the agent-memory project (file an issue in its repo, or bring it to the tool maintainer) for back-port + validation. See SKILLS.md → "Tool-provided (system) skills".

The on-demand, recurring counterpart to the enable-time knowledge harvest (ENABLE.md Step 4b). Enable seeds memory once from the team's docs; this skill keeps it in sync as those docs evolve.

When to use

• The repo's docs have grown or changed since it was enabled — new ADRs, a design spec, decision-log entries, a roadmap/kanban update.
• To backfill a repo that was enabled before the curious harvest existed (the post-upgrade catch-up).
• A human or agent asks to "harvest knowledge" / "refresh memory from the docs."

On demand only — never part of the per-session ritual, and not tied to enable/upgrade mode.

It is NOT a vendor /init

A vendor /init does a deep code analysis and (re)writes a vendor steering file (CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, …), usually overwriting it. harvest-knowledge instead:

• reads the team's human-authored knowledge docs (prose — not code),
• distills durable facts into the neutral, shared, committed memory/ layer (every vendor sees it),
• is additive + incremental — it never overwrites curated facts; a conflict becomes a Contradiction thread, not a silent rewrite,
• is repeatable — run it whenever docs change, not a one-shot bootstrap.

You may borrow /init's analysis muscle, but the output goes to memory/, never a vendor file.

What to do

1. Enumerate, recursively (same net as ENABLE.md Step 4b). Recurse every documentation tree — docs/, doc/, documentation/, wiki/, rfcs/, adr/, design/, notes/ (all subfolders) — and sweep the repo + module roots for human-authored knowledge markdown: decision logs / DECISIONS*, ADR*, ROADMAP* / TODO* / BACKLOG*, kanban/board files, ARCHITECTURE* / DESIGN*, CONTRIBUTING*, RFC*, GLOSSARY*, onboarding / runbook / postmortem notes. Match .md/.markdown/.mdx/.rst/.txt/.adoc. Exclude (not team prose): node_modules/, vendor/, .venv/venv/, target/, dist/, build/, .git/, generated API reference, minified/vendored files, anything already .gitignored.
2. Scope to what's NEW or CHANGED since the last harvest. Read last_harvest from continuity.md → Project State (the marker this skill stamps in step 7). If present, look only at docs changed since then — git log --since=<date> / git diff --name-only <since>..HEAD over the doc paths. If it's absent (never harvested — or the repo predates this field), treat it as a full first pass. Either way, budget with disclosure: cap the read (prioritize roots → docs/ → recently-modified); if the budget is hit, record a - [ ] (knowledge-harvest) Open Thread listing what's left, so nothing vanishes silently. (last_harvest only scopes the read — the step-4 check-existing-first guard is what actually prevents duplicates, so a re-scan is always safe.)
3. Distill — don't transcribe — into memory, additively:
   • conventions / architecture decisions / hard constraints → memory/instructions.md (and seed Architectural Invariants from explicit "must / never" rules);
   • current goals / roadmap / in-flight work / decision-log open items → Open Threads; the aspiration → the Current-state context of memory/vision.md (never fabricate the target);
   • newcomer-facing knowledge → candidate smoke-test questions.
   • Map, don't mirror: link the canonical doc and capture only the enduring fact — never duplicate a living doc into memory.
4. Check each candidate against existing facts first (DECAY.md §10) so a re-run doesn't duplicate. A harvested fact that contradicts an existing one → raise a - [ ] Contradiction: … Open Thread (never-pick-a-winner); a genuine replacement → supersede the old fact (DECAY.md §9). Never silently overwrite curated memory.
5. Human-gated. Summarize what you folded in, what you superseded/flagged, and what you skipped for budget — let the human review before it's treated as settled.
6. Record it. A harvest is a memory-relevant event → write a session log with a ## Memory References section listing the fact ids you created / changed (it stays inside the normal after-session ritual).
7. Stamp last_harvest in continuity.md → Project State: last_harvest: <today> | through <this session-file> (create the field if absent — it sits with last_review / last_invariant_check). This is what step 2 reads next time, so each run scopes incrementally. The harvest owns last_harvest, the way the review owns last_review. Even a no-op run (nothing new to fold) stamps it — that records "docs were checked through here." Write it safely (REVIEW.md → Safety: never truncate-before-read).