---
name: archivum
description: Operate a Git-backed Archivum as durable agent memory for projects, research, decisions, meetings, tasks, sources, and outputs. Use when the user asks to capture, find, connect, update, audit, or resume work in an Archivum, or to initialize an Archivum workspace. Do not use merely because a repository contains Markdown.
---

# Archivum

Make useful work survive the conversation. Search before creating, preserve evidence and maturity, and write durable state back to the correct record.

## Resolve the workspace

Use this order:

1. Use a path the user explicitly supplied.
2. Use `ARCHIVUM_ROOT` when set.
3. From the current directory, walk upward for both `config.yaml` and `00_meta/`.
4. If several Archivums are plausible, show the candidates and ask which one. Never guess.

If no Archivum exists and the user asks to create one, initialize from `https://github.com/AntreasAntoniou/archivum`. Do not clone or create a workspace without permission.

## Orient with bounded context

1. Read `AGENTS.md` when present.
2. Read `00_meta/workspace_profile.md`, `00_meta/workspace_state.md`, and `config.yaml`.
3. Inspect `git status --short` and preserve unrelated changes.
4. Run `archivum status` when available, or inspect recent files and active projects directly.
5. Search with `rg` or `rg --files`; load only records relevant to the request.

Do not recursively read the whole archive as an initialization ritual. Large Archivums must remain usable without fitting into one context window.

## Select the operation

### Find or answer

- Search titles, tags, frontmatter, aliases, and body text.
- Prefer canonical records and primary sources over later summaries.
- Answer with repository-relative source paths.
- Distinguish what the archive states from your inference.
- Do not mutate the workspace unless the user also asked to capture or update something.

### Capture

- Search for an existing canonical record first.
- Route the content using `00_meta/schema.md` and a template from `00_meta/templates/`.
- Default to `visibility: private`.
- Preserve quotation, paraphrase, observation, and inference as different things.
- Add source URLs or repository-relative paths.
- Use `archivum new <kind> "<title>"` when available.

### Update or connect

- Edit the smallest canonical record that can own the new state.
- Preserve `created_date`; update `last_updated_date` with the actual date.
- Link related records instead of duplicating prose.
- Preserve authorship and mark AI-assisted synthesis when attribution matters.
- Never promote an idea to a result or a result to established fact without linked evidence.

### Resume a project

- Read the project's `README.md`, `tasks.md`, latest logbook entries, and directly relevant experiment or decision records.
- Report current state, strongest evidence, blockers, and the next meaningful action.
- If work continues, append a dated logbook entry and update task/state records only when reality changed.

### Record research

- Keep question, mechanism, design, observation, interpretation, and decision separate.
- Use `maturity: seed | proposal | in-progress | observed | validated | retired`.
- Record contradictory, null, negative, or inconclusive evidence when it changes belief or action.
- Attach code, data, configuration, and artefact paths where available.
- State the narrowest claim supported by the evidence and what remains unestablished.

### Process a meeting or conversation

- Preserve the source or stable pointer.
- Extract decisions with rationale, actions with owners and dates, unresolved questions, and changed project state.
- Promote durable decisions to decision records and link back to the meeting.
- Do not manufacture consensus from silence or ambiguity.

### Prepare an output

- Trace material claims to source records.
- Label proposals, implementations, observations, and results accurately.
- Keep authorship and AI assistance honest.
- Treat `visibility: public` as permission metadata, not authorization to publish.
- Never send, upload, submit, or publish without explicit approval.

## Close durable work

1. Review the relevant diff.
2. Update tasks, decision records, and `00_meta/workspace_state.md` only when the underlying state changed.
3. Run `archivum doctor` after structural edits when available.
4. Report changed paths, evidence boundaries, and unresolved questions.

Do not turn the state file into a transcript of agent activity. The archive records the work, not the chat.