archive-searcher_skill

Overview

This skill provides professional Git forensics and archival intelligence for deep historical recovery. It streamlines multi-layered investigations using pickaxe and regex history searches, reflog rescue, object inspection, and Conductor track integration. Designed for modern codebases with heavy refactors and AI-driven churn, it surfaces context and provenance as first-class results.

How this skill works

The skill combines git-native techniques (git log -S/-G, --follow, reflog, fsck, bisect) with a semantic archival layer (Conductor tracks and archive indexes) to locate when, why, and by whom changes happened. It inspects diffs, commit metadata, blob objects, and branch topology, and it recommends recovery steps such as checkout-from-hash, restoring deleted branches, or unshallowing clones. Results are ranked by relevance and contextual signals like PR references, track IDs, and timestamps.

When to use it

• Recover deleted files, configs, or entire branches after accidental removal or rebase.
• Trace the exact commit that introduced or removed a specific string, constant, or API key.
• Audit repository history for compliance, author activity, or suspicious secrets.
• Investigate regressions with automated bisect workflows when commit messages are unhelpful.
• Reconstruct feature intent by linking commits to Conductor track archives and PR metadata.

Best practices

• Always search history with --all and --patch to avoid missing deleted or moved content.
• Prefer git log -S for lifecycle tracking and git log -G for pattern-based changes.
• Use reflog early when work seems missing; it often holds pre-rebase or amended commits.
• Keep commits atomic and include track IDs/PR links to improve future archival searches.
• Unshallow clones before deep forensic queries (git fetch --unshallow) to get full history.

Example use cases

• Find when a deprecated API key was first committed and immediately rotate it after discovery.
• Locate the last known good implementation of a UI component removed by a large cleanup commit.
• Recover a config/settings.yaml from an old commit and restore it into the current branch.
• Identify the commit that inadvertently fixed a race condition using git bisect and automated tests.
• Audit author activity across projects by exporting commit metadata for legal or compliance reviews.