/flight-cleanup — strip closed and stale tasks

/flight-cleanup — strip closed and stale tasks

The open-task list in flight-workbench/memos/tasks-<user>.md accumulates over time. This skill:

1. Removes tasks the user has explicitly marked closed (any line beginning with - [x], - ✓, - [DONE], or containing (closed) / (done) / (resolved) at end).
2. Reviews tasks that look outdated or redundant, asking the user case-by-case: archive, delete, or keep.
3. Archives everything removed to a single timestamped file under flight-workbench/archive/, so nothing is permanently lost.

This is narrower than /flight-land. Cleanup only touches the open-task list. It never touches CLAUDE.md (CLAUDE.md is shared with other tools and holds no flight tasks).

Step 1 — Read the task list

Determine the OS user: echo "$USER". Read ./flight-workbench/memos/tasks-$USER.md. Locate every list item. Note their positions for later replacement.

If the file does not exist, or has no tasks (only the placeholder), tell the user and exit:

Nothing to clean up. Your open-task list is empty.

Step 2 — Auto-classify

For each task line, classify as:

• Closed — line starts with - [x], - ✓, - [DONE], - [done], or contains (closed), (done), (resolved), or RESOLVED at end. These will be removed without asking.
• Stale-looking — line has a date prefix matching the project's FLIGHT_FILE_PREFIX shape (default YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM) and the date is more than 30 days old AND nothing in the line indicates it is recurring or pinned. Flag for user review.
• Redundant — two or more tasks reference the same subject (substring similarity heuristic). Flag the group for user review.
• Current — everything else. Keep.

Step 3 — Confirm closed-task archive

Show the user the closed-task list (if any) before removing:

Found N closed tasks to archive:

• <task 1>
• <task 2>

Archive all and remove from the list? (yes / no / let me review)

On yes: proceed to archival. On no: skip. On review: walk through each via AskUserQuestion (Archive / Keep).

Step 4 — Review stale and redundant tasks

For each flagged stale or redundant task (or group), use AskUserQuestion:

Task: "" (filed )

What should I do with this?

• Archive — move to archive file, remove from the list (Recommended for stale)
• Delete — remove without archiving (only if truly meaningless)
• Keep — leave it in the open-task list

For redundant groups, present the group together and ask which to keep (if any) and which to archive.

Step 5 — Write the archive file

Get timestamp: date +"${FLIGHT_FILE_PREFIX:-%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M}" (env var overrides default; default renders as YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM). Run it in the shell and use the output verbatim — never a time from your own sense of "now" (your clock is UTC and would be off by the local offset). Create:

./flight-workbench/archive/<prefix>-cleanup-strippings.md

Content:

# Cleanup strippings — <YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM>

Tasks removed from flight-workbench/memos/tasks-<user>.md during `/flight-cleanup`.

## Closed tasks

- <task line 1, as it appeared>
- <task line 2>

## Archived as stale

- <task line>

## Archived as redundant (kept: "<the one preserved>")

- <task line>

Omit sections that have no entries.

If the user chose Delete for any tasks, list them in a final section so the choice is auditable:

## Deleted (per user)

- <task line>

Step 6 — Rewrite the task list

Use the Edit tool to replace the task list in tasks-$USER.md with the surviving tasks (in the order they originally appeared, with closed/archived/deleted entries removed).

If the surviving list is empty, restore the placeholder:

(No open tasks yet. Use /flight-memo <task> to add one.)

Step 7 — Append a log entry to the session history

Append one line to today's session history (find the latest flight-workbench/history/<TS>-session.md):

- <HH:MM> cleanup: removed N tasks (M closed, S stale, R redundant) → flight-workbench/archive/<archive-filename>

Step 8 — Report

Cleanup done. Removed N tasks from your open-task list (M closed, S archived as stale, R archived as redundant, D deleted). Your active task count is now K.

Archive: flight-workbench/archive/<filename> — open it to see what was removed.