comment-hygienelisted

# Comment hygiene <!-- harness:claude-code --> In Codex, first read [Codex distribution](../delegation/references/dispatch-knobs.md#codex-distribution) for installed role setup, native dispatch, isolation prerequisites, and completion routing. That section supplies the Codex procedures wherever this workflow names Claude Code tools. <!-- /harness --> History and commentary belong on the related task, not in the code. A comment is read at 3am by someone fixing something else; one that narrates how the code came to be costs that reader a paragraph and pays nothing. Writing scratch commentary while building is expected. This is the cleanup step that runs before the work lands, not a ban on thinking in comments. ## The keep test A comment survives iff a competent reader would break something without it: - non-obvious external behavior (an endpoint that returns 200 on failure) - ordering or precedence not visible at the call site - why the obvious alternative is wrong - an invariant a future edit would violate Everything else is history. ## The cut list Issue and board refs (`PROJ-412`, "board card 7", a bare issue number), dates, attributions ("owner report 2026-08-10", "per the review call"), CI run ids, "this used to X", "the first version of this", investigation narratives, and anything restating what the line below plainly says. ## Process 1. **Harvest before you cut.** The history is not worthless, it is in the wrong place. Append it to the related tracker item