flow-curator_skill

Overview

This skill manages backlog hygiene and archives completed phases to keep the active plan focused. It provides commands to move tasks to backlog, restore tasks, view backlog state, and archive finished phases while updating project indexes and dashboards. Use it to reduce clutter, preserve history, and maintain clear current priorities.

How this skill works

The skill inspects .flow/ directories to identify active phases, backlog items, and archived phases. Backlog operations move pending task files into .flow/backlog/ with metadata and update DASHBOARD.md; pull operations restore tasks to target phases and renumber as needed. Plan-split/archive operations back up the repository, move completed phase folders into .flow/archive/, regenerate an ARCHIVE_INDEX, renumber remaining phases, and update the dashboard.

When to use it

• When too many pending tasks clutter the active plan
• To defer scope-creep or blocked work to a managed backlog
• When you want to view backlog items and reasons to defer
• To restore a deferred task into a current phase
• When a phase is complete and you want to archive history and renumber

Best practices

• Only backlog tasks with status PENDING; complete or cancel IN PROGRESS items first
• Always capture a concise reason and ‘when to pull back’ condition when backlogging
• Create a backup before any plan-split or archive operation
• Renumber phases and tasks after moves to keep dashboard references accurate
• Keep archive entries complete (dates, summaries, task counts) for traceability

Example use cases

• Move a non-essential feature to backlog with a reason like ‘V1 scope reduction’
• Run backlog view to get a sorted table of backlogged tasks and pull dates
• Pull Admin Dashboard from backlog into the current testing phase and renumber tasks
• Archive completed Phase 1 to .flow/archive/, create backup, and renumber remaining phases
• Clean the active plan by moving blocked work into backlog pending dependencies