Context Archiving

Intro

context-archiving manages the cold tier of processkit context. It identifies stable archive candidates, packages their Markdown payloads into cold storage, removes the hot files, and leaves metadata discoverable through index-management.

Overview

Use this skill when context size is becoming expensive, old completed work is rarely read, or log/event payloads need to move from the hot tree into a cold archive while metadata remains queryable.

The cold-tier target shape is:

1. Select stable entities by kind, state, and age.
2. Package payload files into a content-addressed tar.gz archive.
3. Keep index rows queryable with storage_location pointing at the archive.
4. Extract full payloads on demand for historical queries.

Version 0.2.0 implements this shape with a dry-run-first archive writer and explicit payload extraction tool.

MCP Tools

Tool	Purpose
describe_archive_policy()	Return the default hot/warm/cold policy.
plan_archive(kind, state, older_than_days)	Return candidate entities from the live index.
create_archive(kind, state, older_than_days, limit, dry_run)	Write a tar.gz archive plus manifest, remove hot files, reindex, and log the archive event. Defaults to dry-run.
extract_archive_payload(entity_id)	Resolve an archived entity and return its full Markdown payload from cold storage.

Default Policy

• WorkItems: archive terminal states after 30 days.
• DecisionRecords: keep accepted/superseded decisions hot for 90 days.
• LogEntries: shard by month; archive payload shards after 90 days.
• Migrations: archive applied or rejected history after 30 days.
• Never archive active, proposed, blocked, or in-progress entities.
• Never archive files under context/templates/.

Gotchas

• Do not move entity files by hand. The index must keep metadata queryable after archiving, so any write path has to update storage_location transactionally.
• Do not archive active state. Backlog, in-progress, blocked, proposed, and active entities belong in the hot tier.
• Treat logs as append-only. A cold log shard can be packaged, but its event identity and timestamp metadata must remain queryable forever.
• Do not trust filesystem age alone. Use entity metadata timestamps and state from the index; git checkout times are not archival age.
• Keep extraction explicit. A historical query may need full payload text, but routine status and routing queries should stay metadata-only.

Full reference

create_archive() writes two files under context/archives/YYYY/MM/: a compressed tar payload and a JSON manifest. The manifest keeps entity metadata, the original hot-tree path, the tar member path, a SHA-256 digest of each payload, and the storage_location used by index-management.

After writing the manifest, the tool removes the archived hot files, rebuilds the index, and records a context_archive.created event. dry_run=True is the default and returns the exact candidate set without moving files.

Archived entities remain visible through normal index lookups. Use extract_archive_payload(entity_id) only when the full historical Markdown is needed.