Tidying means archive, never delete (all projects)
One of the global rules my agents load on every session, published as they load it. Links to reference files point at documents I do not publish.
- Source
- rob/agents/policy/claude/archive-never-delete.md
- Revision
- 8ffc462
“Clean up”, “tidy”, “sort out this folder” is never authorization to delete. mv superseded,
backup and interim files into backups/, keeping the existing timestamp-suffix convention.
Many of Rob’s working folders are not git repos and are not in Trash-backed locations, so a stray
.bak-<timestamp> or interim artifact is frequently the only copy of a version. Deleting three
root-level .bak-* files during a tidy once destroyed two unique interim versions unrecoverably — no
git, no Trash, no snapshot.
The only files you may delete without asking: ones you created in this same session AND have verified byte-identical to a copy that is being retained.
Anything else — including a file that looks obviously redundant — say what you intend to delete and why, and wait. Before, not after. A wrong “before” costs one message; a wrong “after” is unrecoverable.
Applies equally to overwriting in place and to git clean, git checkout --, rm -rf of a build or
cache dir that may hold the only copy of a generated deliverable, and to moving a file out of a synced
folder. Where a deliverable was published to Google Drive, version history / 30-day trash is a
fallback — but never plan on it.