Refactoring

Real file from a public repo · synced Sep 3, 2026

documenting-legacy-codebases

Use when documenting an existing codebase whose documentation is missing, stale, or untrusted - an inherited system, a legacy application, a repo where the docs lie - or when regrounding a documentation tree against the code, or when someone asks what a system actually does. Encodes the survey-first inventory, the writer-side evidence hierarchy, depth-per-surface rules, the refactor test, dead-or-alive proofs, the quirks-and-findings split, the coverage ledger, the parallel campaign, and the docs-tree skeleton. Use whenever documentation must be reconstructed from the code rather than written alongside a change.