Documentation

TL;DR The .github/copilot-instructions.md file started as 10 lines of project description and grew into a 99-line “operating system” for AI assistants. Then it split: failure patterns moved into docs/ai-lessons.md (now 482 lines across 20+ categories), and file-type-specific rules moved into .github/instructions/ with applyTo glob patterns. The same template structure was standardized across 5 repositories. This post traces the three generations of AI instruction architecture and shows how every production incident permanently improves AI reliability. ...

TL;DR I run Wiki.js on k3s as the cluster’s internal knowledge base. It is not a place I write documentation — it is a place the AI writes documentation after completing work. When Claude finishes deploying a service, debugging an incident, or refactoring infrastructure, it commits the results to the wiki with architecture diagrams, decision rationale, and operational notes. I am the primary reader. When I want to understand how something works, or why a specific decision was made three weeks ago, I go to the wiki instead of digging through git history or re-reading code. ...

TL;DR The AI memory system I built three weeks ago started causing the problem it was designed to solve: context window exhaustion. Five generic Claude skills — duplicated identically across all 5 repositories in my workspace — consumed 401KB (~100K tokens) of potential context. The gh-cli skill alone was 40KB per copy, accounting for 42% of all skill content. I ran a full audit, deleted 25 duplicate files, and documented the anti-pattern to prevent recurrence. ...