Workspace Hygiene — Auto-Clean for AI Agents

Automatically enforces workspace file size limits, archives stale or bloated files, and organizes root contents to maintain efficient AI agent context.

Workspace Hygiene Skill

Auto-maintains workspace cleanliness. Prevents context bloat that burns tokens on every session boot.

Triggers

• Cron: runs daily at 06:00 Europe/Berlin
• Manual: when Zinou says "clean up", "audit workspace", "hygiene check"
• Auto: after any session that creates 10+ files

Rules

1. BOOT FILE SIZE LIMITS (hard limits, enforce or trim)

• AGENTS.md: max 50 lines
• MEMORY.md: max 80 lines
• STATE.md: max 60 lines
• SOUL.md: no limit (identity, changes rarely)
• USER.md: max 40 lines
• IDENTITY.md: max 30 lines
• TOOLS.md: no limit (reference, not loaded often)
• HEARTBEAT.md: max 20 lines

If any file exceeds its limit:

1. Identify bloat (action logs, duplicate info, stale references)
2. Move old content to memory/archive/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md
3. Leave a 1-line pointer: See archive/YYYY-MM-DD-<topic>.md
4. Log the trim in today's daily note

2. ROOT WORKSPACE RULES

• NO image/video files in workspace root → archive/frames/ or archive/media/
• NO package.json/package-lock.json in root (belongs in subprojects)
• NO temp scripts in root → /tmp/ for those
• NO .secrets in root → always in talonforge/.secrets/
• Only .md files and directories allowed in workspace root

3. MEMORY/ RULES

• Only keep files actively needed this week
• Daily notes older than 3 days → archive (except today's)
• Stale files (not updated in 7+ days, not referenced by STATE.md) → archive
• Fragment daily notes (multiple per day) → consolidate into one
• claude-task.md → archive when >7 days stale, keep latest 500 lines
• Never delete, always archive to memory/archive/

4. AUTO-ARCHIVE PATTERNS

After any session:

• If temp files created in /tmp/ → leave them (auto-cleaned)
• If files created in workspace root → move to proper location
• If memory/ grows past 10 active files → audit for archiving

5. BLOAT SIGNALS (check for these)

• MEMORY.md action log >5 entries → consolidate to archive
• Same info in 2+ files → keep one, archive the other
• Files with "TODO" or "DRAFT" older than 3 days → flag or archive
• Empty files (<10 bytes) → delete
• Duplicate daily notes → merge

6. ARCHIVE STRUCTURE

text

memory/archive/
  action-log-day1-3.md
  day3-fragments/
  frames/
  media/
  <date>-<topic>.md

7. REPORT FORMAT

After each run, log to today's daily notes:

text

## Workspace Hygiene (HH:MM)
- Trimmed: X files, Y lines removed
- Archived: Z files
- Boot load: N lines (was M lines)
- Status: CLEAN / NEEDS ATTENTION

Cron Setup

Run: 0 6 * * * (daily at 06:00 Europe/Berlin) This is a lightweight check — most days it does nothing. Only acts when bloat exists.