Tracking Rotate — Oversight Cap Enforcement and Archival

Purpose: Bound oversight-file bloat without breaking the chronological trail or by-id lookup (PLAN-028 D3 / BP-167 Part C). --check is the session-close enforcement gate; --apply is the BP-167 Part C rotation that fixes an over-cap file. Complements aim-tracking-freshness (which detects INDEX drift); rotate bounds the append-only-logs and registers.

Ownership boundary: rotate owns append-only-log + register archival. It does NOT touch bugs/INDEX.md or tech-debt/INDEX.md — those generated files and their CLOSED.md shards are owned by aim-tracking-freshness.

--apply support (and the TD-655 limitation): --check enforces the cap on every governed file, but --apply auto-rotation is shipped only for the id-H3 append-only log it was verified against:

File	--apply	Why
tracking/decision-log.md	✅ supported	### DEC-… id-H3 entries or ## S{n} session-blocks (auto-detected — see note below), newest-first; archives the oldest into a dated shard + manifest
tracking/blockers-log.md	⛔ refused → TD-655	"Active Blockers" table + ### BLK- detail H3 + "Resolved Blockers" table — archiving the H3 details orphans the matching table rows
tracking/risk-register.md	⛔ refused → TD-655	table rows under ### Critical/High/Medium/Low severity headers — the H3 boundary is a severity header, not a record
tracking/technical-debt.md	⛔ refused → TD-655	### TD-NNN detail H3 entries + ### <Category> summary tables in "Debt by Category" — archiving the H3 details orphans the table rows referencing those TDs
SESSION_WORK_INDEX.md	⛔ refused → TD-655	four distinct tables (Active Task / Last 5 Sessions / Active Blockers / High Priority Risks); a bare ^| match sheds rows from the wrong table, and the last-5 window is hand-managed
session-index/INDEX.md	⛔ refused → TD-655	### [Month YYYY] H3 sections + Current-Year and Archive tables (mixed)

Entry-format auto-detection (#291): auto-rotation tries the default id-H3 boundary (^### [A-Z]{2,4}-) first; if a governed append-only-log contains zero id-H3 entries, it falls back to the session-block boundary (^## S\d+ ) before reporting "no entries detected". This prevents a ## S{n} decision-log from silently no-op'ing at closeout while its file grows past cap.

For a ⛔ file, --apply makes no changes and exits non-zero with a manual remedy; run python $SCRIPT --fix {file} --oversight-root {oversight_path} (archive-whole-verbatim + lean index rewrite) or trim by hand. Field-aware safe auto-rotation for table-under-severity registers and multi-table live-indexes is deferred to TD-655. The refusal is enforced by relative path (the fixed set: blockers-log.md, risk-register.md, technical-debt.md, SESSION_WORK_INDEX.md, session-index/INDEX.md), so a future cap-contract seed cannot re-enable an unsafe --apply.

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Usage

SCRIPT=~/.ai-memory/_ai-memory/pov/skills/aim-tracking-rotate/scripts/tracking_rotate.py

# Enforcement gate (session-close): exit non-zero if any governed file is over cap.
python $SCRIPT --check --oversight-root /path/to/oversight

# Rotate an over-cap file's oldest entries into a dated archive shard:
python $SCRIPT --apply /path/to/oversight/tracking/decision-log.md \
               --oversight-root /path/to/oversight

# Fix a single over-cap file (conformance + cap-fix + conservation proof):
python $SCRIPT --fix /path/to/oversight/tracking/decision-log.md \
               --oversight-root /path/to/oversight

# Fix all governed oversight files (MEMORY.md excluded by default):
python $SCRIPT --fix-all --oversight-root /path/to/oversight

# Fix all governed files AND MEMORY.md:
python $SCRIPT --fix-all --include-memory-md --oversight-root /path/to/oversight

# Fix MEMORY.md only (lossless relocation to sibling topic files):
python $SCRIPT --fix-memory-md

Optional flags (all modes): --period YYYY-MM (archive period override for deterministic runs). --apply additionally accepts --entry-pattern '<regex>' and --keep <N>. --include-memory-md (with --fix-all only): also fix the auto-memory MEMORY.md; skipped by default with a NOTICE. Oversight root can also come from $AI_MEMORY_OVERSIGHT_ROOT.

MEMORY.md fix details: when you need the full step-by-step procedure for MEMORY.md relocation or collision resolution, read:

cat "$(dirname "$SCRIPT")/../assets/memory_md_fix.md"

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How it works

• --check — for every governed file, read its cap from the file's own front-matter contract (cap_lines/cap_kb, D2) and fall back to a built-in filename → cap registry when the front-matter is absent (the D2 no-clobber carry-over case). Measure wc -l / wc -c. On any breach emit a SYSTEM FAILURE block (file, size, cap, remedy command) and exit non-zero so closeout cannot complete while a governed file is over cap.

  --check also asserts the BP-191 Part C never-archive invariant (TD-843): any file whose own front matter declares a class of heartbeat, or a detail-record outside session-logs/ (the row-5a durable subset — plans, specs, the BP catalog, ADRs), must never also declare rotation_trigger/archive_target — a CLASS POLICY VIOLATION block is emitted and the gate fails if one does. A detail-record under session-logs/ (row-5b, e.g. SESSION_HANDOFF_*) is exempt — it legitimately archives by recency. This scan is independent of the cap check above and covers every front-matter-declared file under the oversight root except frozen/immutable subtrees (task snapshot dirs, archive shards, and research/ notes).

• --apply <file> — move the oldest contiguous block of whole entries (never splitting an entry) into a dated shard, then update the manifest (decision-log-INDEX.md, append-only-log), write a thin live pointer, and verify counts. An archived entry whose id already exists in the shard with identical content is treated as a safe replay and skipped (so an interrupted --apply can be re-run idempotently); if the id matches with different content, --apply refuses — exiting non-zero with the colliding id(s), leaving the live file and shard untouched — so a body is never silently overwritten or dropped. Heartbeat / thin-register files (rotation_trigger: none) are check-only, and the table-under-severity registers / multi-table live-indexes are deferred to TD-655 (see the support table above) — --apply refuses both non-destructively. For append-only-log files, --apply also fences any unfenced ## Entry Format example before parsing, preventing scaffold-strip (additive-only; no change to archived content).

• --fix <file> / --fix-all — non-interactive fix: (1) add D2 front-matter if missing (template-sourced), (2) cap-fix by class (--apply for append-only-log / rotatable registers; archive-whole-verbatim + lean index rewrite for table-row registers and multi-table live-indexes (blockers-log.md, risk-register.md, technical-debt.md, SESSION_WORK_INDEX.md, session-index/INDEX.md); template front-matter refresh for heartbeats), (3) prove conservation (lost == 0). Always backup-first; emits a plan + conservation report. --fix-all iterates over all governed oversight files; pass --include-memory-md to also fix MEMORY.md (default: NOTICE + skip).

• --fix-memory-md — lossless relocation for the Claude Code auto-memory MEMORY.md (class auto-memory-index, cap 200 lines / 25 KB whichever-comes-first). Triggers when MEMORY.md is over cap OR contains log-shape violations (any entry > 2 non-blank lines or > 200 chars); a compliant MEMORY.md triggers no changes. Moves over-long entries to sibling topic files in the same memory/ directory, leaves one-line - [Title](sibling.md) — hook pointers. Proves conservation across the full union (MEMORY.md ∪ memory/*.md). Does not use cold dated shards — sibling files stay hot and on-demand. For the full procedure and collision resolution steps, read assets/memory_md_fix.md.

• --check MEMORY.md — the cap check for auto-memory-index is a WARN, not a gate failure. If MEMORY.md is over cap or has log-shape violations, the check emits WARN: lines to stderr but still exits 0.

Contract source of truth: PARZIVAL-OVERSIGHT-SOT.md §14 (caps) and BP-167 Part C (rotation lifecycle). Caps are byte and line — either breach triggers a violation (the oversight classes; for auto-memory-index whichever-comes-first).

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When to use

Invoked by the session-close workflow (session/close/steps-c/): step-02 rotates at write (append, then --apply if over cap); the enforce-caps gate step runs --check before save so a bloated handoff is never pushed.