Mine triage library git histories for unretrieved content

Summary

Six directories in triage/library/ retain full .git histories from their lives as independent repositories. Those histories may contain content (files, commits, branches) that was never carried forward into the current triage checkout or into the published library. Extract anything of value, then remove the .git directories.

Motivation

These repos were consolidated into triage/library as a bulk import. The current working tree of each is what survived, but git histories may contain deleted files, old branches, or earlier drafts that hold content worth preserving. Once the histories are mined, the .git directories (117M total) can be deleted.

Targets

Directory	.git size	Notes
triage/library/org/	80M	Likely the largest content trove
triage/library/z/	31M
triage/library/digital-garden/	5.7M
triage/library/emsenn-202512/	368K
triage/library/personal-records/	140K
triage/library/dg/	135K

Steps

1. For each target, enumerate all branches and tags.
2. For each branch, diff the branch tip against the current working tree. Identify files present in the history but absent from the current checkout.
3. For files of interest (content, not config/build artifacts), extract them into triage/ at the appropriate path — or directly into the published library if they’re ready.
4. For deleted files that existed at some point in the history, review whether they were intentionally removed or lost in consolidation.
5. After extraction is complete for a repo, delete its .git directory.
6. Commit after each repo is processed.

Done when

• All 6 histories have been reviewed
• Any content worth preserving has been extracted to triage or the published library
• All 6 .git directories have been removed
• Total freed space documented in log

Dependencies

None.

Open questions

• Automation: a script could diff each branch tip against the working tree and list missing files. Worth writing before doing this manually — could be reused if more old repos appear.
• private content: some histories may contain content that belongs in content/private/. Flag for emsenn’s review rather than placing in triage.

Log

2026-03-08 — Created. The 84 .git submodule pointer files and stray node_modules were already cleaned; these 6 actual .git directories were kept pending history mining.