Doc Archaeology

Parent: Writing and Documentation · researched 2026-05-29T19:26:48.971Z· 6 sources · 10 concepts · skill doc-archaeology

Excavate aging documents for staleness, dead links, process drift, phantom dependencies, and obsolete examples.

Doc Archaeology

Excavate aging documents for staleness, dead links, process drift, phantom dependencies, and obsolete examples. [source]

Five categories of doc decay

Stale Facts - claims about state-of-the-world that have changed [source]
Dead Links - URLs that 404, redirect to unrelated destinations [source]
Drift from Current Process - procedures that no longer reflect actual practice [source]
Phantom Dependencies - scripts, files, tools, people that no longer exist [source]
Obsolete Examples - code snippets reflecting prior API or UI [source]

Five-pass workflow

Last-Updated Lens - estimate age, catalog time-sensitive claims, set decay risk (low/medium/high) [source]
Fact-Check Pass - verify each claim against current state [source]
Link-Check Pass - verify every URL; flag auth-gated as "unverified" [source]
Process-Check Pass - verify procedures against current practice at step level [source]
Dependency-Check Pass - check scripts, files, tools, channels, people [source]

Findings table

Severity: Critical/Misleading → High/Outdated → Medium/Cosmetic → Low/Historical [source]

Salvage decisions

Update in place - targeted fixes; structure is sound [source]
Restructure and refresh - major rewrites needed [source]
Deprecate with pointer - superseded, add deprecation banner [source]
Archive - historical state; remove from search [source]
Delete - fully phantom, all claims stale [source]

Anti-patterns

Noting a doc is old without running any passes (ostrich mode) [source]
Rewriting when targeted refresh would suffice [source]
Deleting load-bearing historical context [source]
Treating unverifiable as confirmed [source]

Children

Five decay categories (stale facts, dead links, drift, phantom dependencies, obsolete examples) (frontier)
Last-updated lens pass (frontier)
Link verification pass (frontier)
Process-currency pass (frontier)
Dependency audit pass (frontier)
Example validation pass (frontier)
Salvage decision (update / restructure / deprecate / archive / delete) (frontier)
Semantic decay and knowledge drift (frontier)
Diátaxis process-drift theory (how-to guides rot fastest) (frontier)
Nielsen documentation maintenance research (frontier)

Frontier under this node: Dependency audit pass, Diátaxis process-drift theory (how-to guides rot fastest), Example validation pass, Five decay categories (stale facts, dead links, drift, phantom dependencies, obsolete examples), Last-updated lens pass, Link verification pass, Nielsen documentation maintenance research, Process-currency pass, Salvage decision (update / restructure / deprecate / archive / delete), Semantic decay and knowledge drift

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