Project Lifecycle SOP

How projects move through their lifecycle in the vault — from inception to archive.

Project structure

Every non-trivial project gets a folder in 01-projects/:

01-projects/{project-slug}/
├── _project.md          # Manifest — status, linked docs, decisions, session log
├── discovery/           # Research, scout reports, requirements
├── deliverables/        # The actual outputs
└── notes/               # Working notes, intermediate analysis

Subdirectories are created on-demand — not every project needs all of them.

The manifest (`_project.md`)

---
date: {created date}
type: project
status: active | complete | archived
owner: Ray | Founder | Both
priority: Urgent | High | Medium | Low
archived: {date, only when archived}
tags: {relevant tags}
---

Body sections:

Context summary — 2-4 sentences: what is being built and why
Linked documents — wikilinks to related vault entries
Key decisions — table: date, decision, rationale
Open questions — what’s unresolved
Session log — table: date, activity, next steps

Lifecycle phases

1. Active

Project is being worked on. Files live in 01-projects/{slug}/.

The Notion board tracks tasks associated with active projects. The vault folder holds artifacts that need to persist across sessions (research, deliverables, decisions).

2. Complete

Work is done. Before archiving:

Deliverables with lasting value promoted to 06-reference/ or left in 01-projects/
Manifest updated: status: complete
Related Notion tasks marked Done
Any concept articles or cross-links generated from findings

A project can stay in complete status indefinitely if the artifacts are still useful for active reference.

3. Archived

Project is retired. Working artifacts no longer need to surface in searches.

# Move the project folder
mv ~/rdco-vault/01-projects/{slug}/ ~/rdco-vault/07-archive/{slug}/

# Update manifest
# status: archived
# archived: {date}

# Re-index
cd ~/rdco-vault && qmd update && qmd embed

When to archive

Archive when ALL of:

The project is complete or explicitly shelved
No active Notion tasks reference the project
The working artifacts (drafts, intermediate research) are unlikely to be searched for
Any durable deliverables have been promoted to their permanent home

When NOT to archive

The project produced a reusable template or framework → keep in 01-projects/ or promote to 06-reference/
The project is paused but will resume → keep in 01-projects/, set status to paused
The research has ongoing reference value → keep in 06-reference/

Composable skills and project workflows

Projects that involve multi-phase work can define their phase sequence in the manifest:

## Workflow
1. Research → `/cross-check` or manual investigation
2. Design → write deliverable
3. Build → implement
4. Validate → test against acceptance criteria
5. Ship → deploy, publish, or file to vault

Each phase maps to one or more skill invocations. The /check-board skill picks up Notion tasks and dispatches to the appropriate skills. Complex projects can define custom sequences; simple projects just work through their tasks linearly.

../07-archive/README — archive folder conventions
../04-tooling/notion-task-board-reference — how Notion tasks connect to projects