archive

A context-archiving procedure that saves a completed task summary, removes related Git worktrees, and prepares a clean context for the next task.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps close out a task, preserve its summary, clean up completed worktrees, and begin with a fresh context.
Why use it?
It reduces clutter from old conversations and temporary worktrees while checking for uncommitted changes before removal.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/brian-lai/para-programming-plugin/archive
Any agent
npx skills add brian-lai/para-programming-plugin --skill archive
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/brian-lai/para-programming-plugin

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 15 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 574 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 $0.00015 $0.00574
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.00287
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00115
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00057

Measured 2d ago against content hash abf430dfc26b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

archive 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 2d 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.

skills/archive/SKILL.md · 78 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 78 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Archive the current context to create a clean slate for the next task.

Usage

/para:archive
/para:archive --fresh          # Completely empty context
/para:archive --seed           # Carry forward relevant context

Default: create fresh context with reference to completed summaries.

What It Does

  1. Read context/context.md and extract worktree metadata (worktree_path, or per-phase worktree_path entries for phased plans)
  2. Clean up worktrees:
    • For each worktree_path found in metadata, run git worktree remove {worktree_path}
    • If the worktree has uncommitted changes, warn the user and require them to either commit or stash the changes first, then re-run /para:archive; do NOT force-remove (this would permanently destroy uncommitted work)
    • After removal, run git worktree prune to clean up stale references
    • Remove .para-worktrees/ directory if empty
  3. Move context/context.md to context/archives/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM-context.md
  4. Create a fresh context/context.md seeded from ../init/context-template.md:
# Current Work Summary

Ready for next task.

---
```json
{
  "active_context": [],
  "completed_summaries": [
    "context/summaries/YYYY-MM-DD-task-name-summary.md"
  ],
  "last_updated": "TIMESTAMP"
}
```

See ../init/context-schema.md for the full field reference.

  1. Displays: archive location, worktrees removed, confirmation of fresh context, readiness for new task

When to Archive

  • Work is complete and summarized
  • All tests pass and changes are committed
  • Branch has been pushed and PR created (or merged)
  • Ready to start a new, unrelated task

Do NOT archive if work is still in progress or you need the current context for continued work.

Recovery

ls -lt context/archives/           # List archives
cp context/archives/2025-11-24-1430-context.md context/context.md   # Restore

To restore a worktree after archive (if branch still exists):

git worktree add .para-worktrees/{task-name} para/{task-name}

Read the full file on GitHub · 78 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. 2d ago First seen · 78 lines · 15 tokens per session scan A abf430dfc26b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

archive is a skill published in the GitHub repository brian-lai/para-programming-plugin (7 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 15 tokens to every session and 574 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-08-31.

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