---
name: knowledge-ops
description: "Use when an already-running 02-DOCS/ wiki needs day-to-day gardening — too many half-finished articles, a 600-line page that covers three unrelated topics, a note with no obvious home, orphan pages nothing links to, stale answers and superseded articles piling up, or two articles that contradict each other. This is the judgment layer over harness's automation: decide what is worth capturing (default: nothing), where it goes, how to title/split/merge it, build the See Also web, and prune to _archive (never delete). Triggers: 'limpia mi wiki', 'organiza mis notas', 'esto dónde va en la wiki', 'ordena la base de conocimiento', 'split this bloated article', 'where should this note live', 'scores.json says these three are orphans — fix the cross-links', 'prune the stale and superseded stuff'. NOT building, bootstrapping or sweeping the wiki engine (that is harness)."
tags: [knowledge-ops, wiki, 02-docs, knowledge-base, curation, cross-linking, pruning, knowledge-meta]
recommends: [harness, decision-records, meeting-notes, sop-builder, research-ops, codebase-onboarding]
origin: risco
---

# Knowledge Ops — Garden the 02-DOCS Wiki

*The engine is already running. `harness` built the `02-DOCS/` wiki and owns its automation — the inbox sweep, deterministic lint, scoring, gap detection, the self-improve loop. Your job is the four judgments that automation deliberately leaves to a human: what is worth capturing, how it should be shaped, how it connects, and what should retire. You are the gardener, not the machinery.*

## Before you touch anything

1. **Confirm `02-DOCS/wiki/` exists.** If there is no wiki, stop and say: "Run `harness` to build the `02-DOCS/` wiki first, then come back to garden it." Why: this skill operates an existing engine; it never creates one. See `../harness/SKILL.md`.
2. **Read `wiki/harness/user-profile.md`** to set your verbosity (the harness accompaniment dial, L0–L3). Why: a non-technical owner wants decisions narrated; an expert wants terse diffs.
3. **Read `wiki/index.md` and `wiki/scores.json` before any edit.** Why: you garden from the map and the score signal, never blind. `scores.json` tells you what is bloated, orphaned, or stale.

If `wiki/log.md` shows a Maintenance Pass ran in the last few minutes, let it finish — do not race the automation.

## The four operations

Every gardening request is one of four operations. Identify which before you act.

| Operation | You are doing this when… | Primary signal | Writes to |
|-----------|--------------------------|----------------|-----------|
| **Capture** | A note/source needs a decision: keep, where, at what altitude | new content in `inbox/`/`raw/` or a loose user note | `raw/` and/or `wiki/<topic>/<article>.md` |
| **Structure** | An article is bloated, mistitled, or duplicated | length, a non-singular Overview, near-duplicate titles | `wiki/<topic>/`, `_archive/` |
| **Link** | Pages are unreachable or under-connected | `scores.json` orphan_penalty (=5), low inbound count | `## See Also` in articles, `index.md` |
| **Prune** | Answers are stale, articles superseded, conflicts unresolved, gaps bloated | freshness, conflict annotations, old `[FILLED]` gaps | `_archive/`, `log.md`, `gaps.md` |

Whichever you do, append a line to `wiki/log.md` (append-only). The exact entry shapes per operation live in `references/gardening-playbook.md`.

## Capture — the bar is high

**Default is NO.** Capture only what a future reader or agent will need *and* cannot cheaply re-derive. Why: the wiki is a compounding *model*, not a dump — the Karpathy chaos→knowledge paradigm has the LLM write and the human read, so every page must earn its keep.

Walk the altitude ladder, lowest rung first; stop at the first that fits:

1. **Discard** — ephemeral, re-derivable, or already covered. Most things stop here.
2. **Leave in `raw/` only** — a source worth keeping but not worth a synthesized article yet. It stays immutable in `raw/<topic>/`, no `wiki/` page.
3. **Merge into an existing article** — adds a section or fact to a page that already exists. Prefer this over a new page.
4. **New article** — last resort: a genuinely new, single-thesis subject with no home.

Worked examples for each rung are in `references/gardening-playbook.md`.

**Topic choice.** Reuse an existing topic before inventing one, and keep `wiki/` exactly **one level of subdirs** deep (the protocol's rule). 

- Bad: `wiki/payments/stripe/webhooks/retries.md` (four levels deep).
- Good: `wiki/payments/stripe-webhook-retries.md` (existing `payments/` topic, one level).

## Structure — title, Overview, split, merge

**Split** an article when any of these is true:

- It carries **≥2 unrelated theses** (e.g. "Stripe retries" *and* "our refund SLA").
- Its `## Overview` cannot be written as **one honest paragraph**.
- It has grown past readability and the score signal flags it.

Why: one article = one thesis keeps scoring, linking, and retrieval meaningful. After a split, fix `> Sources:` and `> Raw:` on both halves and repair `## See Also` so they reference each other. Recipe in the playbook.

**Merge** near-duplicates into the **higher-scored** page; fold the loser's unique content in, then archive the loser to `wiki/<topic>/_archive/<loser>__YYYY-MM-DD.md` and redirect every inbound link to the survivor. Why: never lose history, never keep two competing truths.

**Title.** A title is the article's address — make it a specific noun phrase, not a label.

- Bad: `Notes on stuff.md`, `Misc.md`, `Stripe.md`.
- Good: `stripe-webhook-retry-policy.md`, `refund-sla-and-escalation.md`.

## Link — build the web, kill orphans

Every article earns **≥1 inbound link** or is a conscious leaf you can justify. Why: an orphan is dead knowledge — nothing reaches it, so it scores `orphan_penalty = 5` and never improves.

- Use `scores.json` as your worklist: sort by lowest score / orphan penalty, fix those first.
- `## See Also` is **bidirectional** — if A links B, B links A.
- Same-topic link: `[Refund SLA](refund-sla-and-escalation.md)`. Cross-topic link: `[OAuth setup](../auth/oauth-setup.md)`. Why: the protocol's relative-link convention; `../` crosses one topic boundary, matching the one-level layout.
- When you add a genuinely new top-level subject, make sure `wiki/index.md` references it so the map stays complete.

## Prune — archive, retire, arbitrate, compact

**Prune is archival, never `rm`.** A superseded article moves to `wiki/<topic>/_archive/<article>__YYYY-MM-DD.md`; you do not delete it. Why: the safety rails forbid destructive loss, and `_archive/` is gitignored from compaction so it stays out of the way without vanishing.

- **Conflicts:** you **flag** contradictions and the **human arbitrates**. Once they choose a winner, you may apply the resolution and annotate the loser — but you never auto-pick. Why: silently choosing a side is data corruption.
- **Stale answers:** mark a page or archived copy with a `> ⚠ Stale — superseded YYYY-MM-DD` note rather than rewriting history.
- **Compaction is bounded:** only `[FILLED YYYY-MM-DD]` gaps **older than 90 days** may be compacted, and only via a single marker in the log. `gaps.md` and `log.md` are append-only — gaps get a `[FILLED]` stamp, never a deletion.
- **Log every prune** to `wiki/log.md`. Exact entry shapes per operation: `references/gardening-playbook.md`.

A full worked prune session (stale + superseded + conflict + gap compaction, all logged) is in the playbook.

## Safety rails (inherited from the protocol)

These are hard constraints, not suggestions. They come from `../harness/references/wiki-protocol.md` — do not override them.

1. **Preserve before overwrite.** Never overwrite an article without first copying the old version to `wiki/<topic>/_archive/<article>__YYYY-MM-DD.md`.
2. **Never auto-resolve a conflict.** Flag it; the human arbitrates.
3. **`gaps.md` and `log.md` are append-only.** Gaps get `[FILLED YYYY-MM-DD]`; nothing is ever edited out.
4. **Log every change** to `wiki/log.md`.
5. **Never touch an article whose `Updated` is < 24h ago** without explicit user say-so. Why: it is likely still being worked.

## Anti-patterns

| Anti-pattern | Why it is wrong | Do instead |
|--------------|-----------------|------------|
| Capturing everything "to be safe" | The wiki rots into a dump; the model stops being a model | Raise the bar; default to discard or `raw/`-only |
| `rm`-ing a superseded article | Loses history the rails protect | Archive to `_archive/<article>__YYYY-MM-DD.md` |
| Auto-picking a winner in a contradiction | Silent data corruption; you guessed | Flag it; let the human arbitrate |
| Re-running `harness` to fix a broken link | Wrong tool — the Maintenance Pass already auto-fixes links | Repair `## See Also` by hand; let automation handle the rest |
| Nesting `wiki/a/b/c.md` | Breaks the one-level topic rule | Flatten to `wiki/<topic>/<article>.md` |
| Editing a past `log.md` / `gaps.md` entry | Breaks the append-only audit trail | Append a new line |
| Splitting on length alone | Two halves of one thesis are worse than one page | Split on thesis count, not line count |
| Creating a new topic for a one-off note | Topic sprawl; reuse beats create | File under the nearest existing topic |

## Hand-offs

Route elsewhere when the request is not gardening an existing wiki:

| Request | Route to |
|---------|----------|
| Build/bootstrap the wiki, run an inbox sweep, scaffold `01-TOOLS`, generate root `CLAUDE.md` | `harness` (`../harness/SKILL.md`) — it owns the engine |
| Turn a meeting transcript into a recap with action items + owners | `meeting-notes` (`../meeting-notes/SKILL.md`) |
| Author a decision record (ADR) with alternatives, status, review cadence | `decision-records` (you may *file* one; that skill *authors* the discipline) |
| Document a repeatable procedure step by step | `sop-builder` (`../sop-builder/SKILL.md`) |
| First-pass walkthrough of an unfamiliar codebase | `codebase-onboarding` |
| Run a literature / source-gathering research project | `research-ops` |

The sharp line: changing the wiki's machinery or filling it in bulk is `harness`. Exercising judgment over what an already-running wiki should contain and how it should be shaped is `knowledge-ops`.
