Archive

Archive is the final step of the Flow workflow. In this guide, you will learn:

• What the archive skill does
• What it checks before filing a change
• Where archived changes live

Overview

The archive skill files a completed change into .flow/archive/. After archiving, the .flow/changes/ directory holds only work that is still in flight, and the archive becomes a self-documenting record of everything that has shipped.

You invoke it with the change name:

/flow-archive project-archiving

How archiving works

Archive is mechanical. It confirms the change is finished, then moves one folder.

What "finished" means depends on what the change did. A change that altered a capability has to be synced first, so its behavior reaches your canonical state before the work is filed away. A change that only preserved behavior, such as a migration or a refactor, has nothing to sync; archive only needs it to have been built. Archive checks the right one for you.

When the change is ready, archive moves the entire folder, unchanged, to .flow/archive/. It edits nothing, commits nothing, and writes no code.

If the change is not ready, archive reports ARCHIVE PAUSED and moves nothing. It tells you what is missing, usually that the change still needs to be synced, and waits.

Both tracks archive

Archive files features and tasks alike. A feature reaches it through brief, build, and sync; a task reaches it through task and, if it changed a capability, sync. Either way, you close it out with the same command.

What archive produces

Archive moves the change folder into .flow/archive/. The files inside are unchanged. The workflow for that change is now complete.

Next steps

• Start the next change with the Brief skill.
• Planning work that is not a user-facing feature? See Open-ended tasks.