understanding-code-archaeology

Reconstruct context and intent from git history, commits, PRs, and issues to understand why code became the way it is. Use when: (1) code appears unnecessarily complex or architecturally inconsistent with surrounding patterns, (2) about to refactor or remove code that seems unnecessary without investigating why it exists, (3) specific places break established patterns in ways that could be either intentional decisions or accidental drift, (4) the current implementation suggests constraints or requirements that aren't documented or immediately apparent, (5) encountering workarounds or technical debt and needing to know if the original problem still exists, (6) debugging an issue and needing to understand what the code was designed to handle versus what it's encountering now, (7) the proposal to change code rests on how it should work rather than evidence about why it works as it does, (8) needing to understand historical context for yourself before you can document it for others using intent-archaeology