Primitive: WORTH — does this candidate fact deserve a current-guidance line at all?
Steps
- State the fact in one line, then apply the gate: would a capable future agent likely get the wrong answer without it? Cut it when code, configuration, or live help reveals it reliably; lookup cost alone does not justify current guidance.
- Keep WORTH inside current guidance:
- Exclude state and evidence records. Do not run an active-state document or dated investigation through this lens; apply WORTH only to conclusions proposed for current guidance.
- Preserve freshness provenance. Keep a per-entry
Discovered: YYYY-MM (sha)stamp only when it lets a future agent judge whether a current workaround's premise is stale; a trim must preserve it.
- Cut a current-guidance candidate on any hit:
- Setup. Put setup and onboarding in the README.
- History. Cut dates, plan IDs, commit SHAs, superseded/originally notes, completion summaries, and deferred-item lists.
- Defaults. Cut restated framework or harness defaults.
- Drift-prone literals. Cut hex codes, version pins, and exact syntax unless the literal is itself load-bearing.
- Keep only a recognized category:
| Category | Keep when |
|---|---|
| Gotcha | A non-obvious trap, anti-pattern, or dead-code warning can cause a wrong change. |
| Coupling | A cross-file constraint is invisible from any single file. |
| Convention | The required choice contradicts the obvious default. |
| Rationale | A tempting wrong alternative exists; keep the reason as the constraint. |
| Pointer | The agent must follow the target before touching the governed work. |
- Cut facts already carried elsewhere. WORTH is corpus-relative: an existing comment, rule, or document makes the same fact a duplicate. Catch duplicates visible in scope; flag cross-document deduplication when the needed sources are outside scope.
- Return the verdict: keep or cut, with a one-line reason; on a keep, include the category (gotcha / coupling / convention / rationale / pointer).