Archive

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

• What the archive skill does
• The gate it checks before filing a change
• What archive does not yet support

Overview

The archive skill files a completed change into .flow/changes/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 verifies one gate, then moves one folder.

The gate is the synced stamp. Archive reads every delta in the change folder and confirms each one carries the synced date that the sync step leaves. Because sync only stamps a delta after confirming the change was built, that single stamp proves the whole chain ran: the change was planned, built, and promoted into canonical state.

When the gate passes, archive moves the entire change folder, unchanged, to .flow/changes/archive/<synced-date>-<change-name>/. It edits nothing, commits nothing, and writes no code.

If the gate fails, for example a delta with no synced stamp, archive reports ARCHIVE PAUSED and moves nothing. It tells you what is missing, usually that the change still needs to be synced, and waits.

A note on the open-ended track

Archive currently files feature-track changes only, the changes that went through the brief and were promoted by sync. A change planned with the task skill never passes through sync, so it carries no synced stamp for archive to check. Filing task-track changes is not supported yet.

What archive produces

Archive moves the change folder into .flow/changes/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.