document-lifecycle

A process for tracking documents from creation through completion, replacement, postponement, or abandonment. It uses shared numbering and moves finished documents into a closed folder.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to number and manage analysis, planning, implementation, testing, review, and critique documents across one work chain.
Why use it?
It prevents related work from losing its shared identity and keeps active documents separate from archived ones. It also helps detect documents left without a clear owner or outcome.

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/groupzer0/vs-code-agents/document-lifecycle
Any agent
npx skills add groupzer0/vs-code-agents --skill document-lifecycle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/groupzer0/vs-code-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 32 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,254 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 $0.00032 $0.01254
Opus 5 $0.00016 $0.00627
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00251
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00125

Measured 2d ago against content hash 189a9509b6bd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

document-lifecycle 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.

vs-code-agents/skills/document-lifecycle/SKILL.md · 166 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 166 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Document Lifecycle Skill

Manages document state transitions, unified numbering, and automated closure across all agent-output directories.


Core Principle

Every work chain shares a single ID. When Analyst creates analysis 080, the downstream plan, implementation, QA, UAT, and critique all use ID 080. This enables human traceability across the entire lifecycle.

Documents in terminal status belong in closed/ subfolders. Active work stays visible; completed work is archived but accessible.


Terminal Statuses

These statuses trigger document closure (move to closed/):

Status Meaning Closed By
Committed Changes committed to git (awaiting release) DevOps
Released Successfully pushed/published DevOps
Abandoned Explicitly dropped, will not proceed User (manual)
Deferred Postponed indefinitely User (manual)
Superseded Replaced by a newer document User (manual)
Resolved All findings addressed (critiques only) Critic

Unified Numbering Protocol

The .next-id File

Location: agent-output/.next-id

Contents: Single integer (e.g., 081)

Rules:

  • Only originating agents (Analyst, Planner when no analysis) read and increment
  • Downstream agents inherit the ID from their source document
  • Never skip numbers; always use the next available

Document Header Format

Every document in agent-output/ MUST include:

---
ID: 080                    # Global sequence number
Origin: 080                # Chain origin (same as ID for originating docs)
UUID: a3f7c2b1             # 8-char random hex for collision-proofing
Status: Active             # Current lifecycle state
---

ID Assignment Rules

Scenario Action
Analyst starts new investigation Read .next-id, increment, use as ID, write back
Planner creates plan from analysis Inherit ID/Origin from analysis doc
Planner creates plan from user request (no analysis) Read .next-id, increment, use as ID, write back
Implementer/QA/UAT/Critic work on plan Inherit ID/Origin from plan doc
Retrospective reviews plan Inherit ID/Origin from plan doc

Read the full file on GitHub · 166 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 166 lines · 32 tokens per session scan A 189a9509b6bd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

document-lifecycle is a skill published in the GitHub repository groupzer0/vs-code-agents (284 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 32 tokens to every session and 1,254 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.

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