Memento defrag — vault maintenance

Move stale notes to the vault's archive/ directory to keep the active vault focused. No merging, no deletion. Git history preserves everything.

The vault location is configured in memento.yml (default: ~/memento). Check ~/.config/memento-vault/memento.yml or ~/memento/memento.yml for the active config.

When to use

• Periodically (monthly or when note count feels high)
• User invokes /memento-defrag
• Before a major project shift to clean up accumulated noise

Process

1. Read all notes in the vault's notes/ directory. Parse frontmatter for each file: certainty, date, type, tags, validity-context, supersedes.

2. Identify archive candidates. A note is a candidate if ANY of these are true:

   • certainty is 1 or 2 AND the note is older than 60 days
   • The note is superseded: another note's supersedes field references this note AND the superseding note is older than 14 days (grace period in case the new note is wrong)
   • validity-context references a dependency or version that has since changed (check package.json or similar if accessible)
   • type: bugfix AND older than 90 days (bugfix context decays fast)

   A note is NEVER a candidate if:

   • It has certainty 4 or 5 (tested/shipped or established pattern)
   • It is linked by 3+ other notes (it's a hub note)
   • It was created in the last 30 days regardless of certainty

3. For notes missing certainty (pre-metadata notes), infer from context:

   • Has source: manual -> treat as certainty 3
   • Has type: decision -> treat as certainty 3
   • Has type: discovery with source: session -> treat as certainty 2
   • Default -> certainty 2

4. Show the candidate list to the user before moving anything. Format:

   Archive candidates (X notes):
   
   - note-name.md — certainty 2, 75 days old, type: discovery
   - other-note.md — superseded by [[newer-note]]
   ...
   
   Notes staying active: Y
   

   Wait for user confirmation. The user can exclude specific notes.

5. Move confirmed candidates to the vault's archive/ directory. Create the directory if it doesn't exist.

6. Update wikilinks. In any remaining active note that links to an archived note, keep the link but add (archived) suffix: [[note-name]] (archived).

7. Update project indexes. In the vault's projects/ directory, move archived note links from ## Notes to a new ## Archived section (create if needed).

8. Commit to vault repo:

   ~/.claude/hooks/vault-commit.sh "defrag: archived N notes"
   

9. Reindex QMD (if installed):

   qmd update -c memento && qmd embed
   

10. Report what was archived and what stayed.

Rules

• Never delete notes. Move to archive/ only.
• Never merge notes. Each note stays atomic.
• Never archive without user confirmation.
• Never touch fleeting/ or projects/ content (only update links in projects).
• If QMD is not available, skip the reindex step.
• Notes in archive/ are still searchable via grep and git history, just not in the active QMD index.