migration-evolution

A guide for safely changing data structures and software contracts while an application is running. It covers database changes, data backfills, API and event compatibility, synchronization, reindexing, and traffic cutovers.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan, review, or verify schema migrations, resumable backfills, legacy integrations, CDC pipelines, reindexing, and production cutovers.
Why use it?
It helps prevent outages when old and new versions of an application must work at the same time. It also makes partial failures, newer data, and rollback limits part of the migration plan.

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/d4rkninja/arcforge/migration-evolution
Any agent
npx skills add d4rkNinja/arcforge --skill migration-evolution
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/d4rkNinja/arcforge

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 81 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,276 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 $0.00081 $0.02276
Opus 5 $0.00041 $0.01138
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00455
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00228

Measured 2d ago against content hash 6b1cecd04426, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

migration-evolution 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/migration-evolution/SKILL.md · 146 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 146 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Think Through Migrations & Evolution

Overview

Production guidance for changing running systems safely. Each reference paper captures the sequences that prevent outages: expand-and-contract instead of in-place renames, resumable backfills that do not overwrite newer writes, compatibility windows for old clients, CDC pipelines with reconciliation, and cutover plans with genuine rollback.

Core principle: A migration is a distributed system that runs while the old and new versions are both live. Every step must tolerate mixed versions, partial failure, and rollback — code rollback never undoes committed data.

Domain Law

NO MIGRATION WITHOUT:
1. the minimum required primary paper(s) for the change type selected from the context table;
2. current state, target state, and every intermediate state written
   down before the first migration step;
3. "Existing-codebase checks" run against deployed versions, consumers,
   and retained data — not just the latest code;
4. every applicable MUST mapped to a migration step, a verification gate,
   or a documented exception.

When to Use

Use this skill when thinking through, reviewing, changing, or verifying:

  • database schema migrations, online/zero-downtime migrations, lock behavior;
  • additive vs destructive changes, column renames, type changes, nullability flips;
  • data migrations and backfills: chunking, resuming, idempotency, rate control;
  • API and event schema evolution with old consumers;
  • backward/forward compatibility windows and deprecation sequencing;
  • data synchronization between two systems during transition;
  • change data capture pipelines and their failure/replay behavior;
  • search index rebuilds and dual-index cutover;
  • feature migration: moving behavior between services with traffic cutover;
  • legacy integration: strangler patterns, adapters, retirement sequencing.

When Not to Use

  • Transaction/outbox internals for avoiding dual writes: use transactions-consistency (047).
  • CI/CD pipeline mechanics and deployment tooling: use runtime-delivery (106, 107).
  • Whole-system replatforming or rewrite decisions: use system-architecture-harness (references 18).
  • Contract design for new APIs: use api-contracts.

Read the full file on GitHub · 146 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 · 146 lines · 81 tokens per session scan A 6b1cecd04426

Subscribe to this mod's changes

migration-evolution is a skill published in the GitHub repository d4rkNinja/arcforge (16 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 81 tokens to every session and 2,276 once invoked, about $0.0004 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.