Tracing Knowledge Lineages

npx skills add majiayu000/claude-skill-registry --skill tracing-knowledge-lineages-julien51-dotfiles --agent claude-code

Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.

# Tracing Knowledge Lineages ## Overview Ideas have history. Understanding why we arrived at current approaches - and what was tried before - prevents repeating failures and rediscovers abandoned solutions. **Core principle:** Before judging current approaches or proposing "new" ones, trace their lineage. ## When to Trace Lineages **Trace before:** - Proposing to replace existing approach (understand why it exists first) - Dismissing "old" patterns (they might have been abandoned for wrong reasons) - Implementing "new" ideas (they might be revivals worth reconsidering) - Declaring something "best practice" (understand its evolution) **Red flags triggering lineage tracing:** - "This seems overcomplicated" (was it simpler before? why did it grow?) - "Why don't we just..." (someone probably tried, what happened?) - "This is the modern way" (what did the old way teach us?) - "We should switch to X" (what drove us away from X originally?) ## Tracing Techniques ### Technique 1: Decision Archaeology Search for when/why current approach was chosen: 1. **Check decision records** (common locations: `docs/decisions/`, `docs/adr/`, `.decisions/`, architecture decision records) 2. **Search conv

Find when approach was introduced
git log --all --grep="introduce.*caching"
Find what file replaced
git log --diff-filter=D --summary | grep pattern
Find discussion of abandoned approach
git log --all --grep="remove.*websocket"