spinout — Guided Project-Extraction Runbook

Status: Deliberately Not Scripted

This is a 5-phase interactive runbook, not a CLI wrapper. Automate only after 2-3 hand-runs have stabilized the pattern — spinout is a low-frequency, high-stakes operation (new remote, fresh history, a frozen marker left behind in the source repo), and premature scripting bakes wrong defaults (wrong sphere, wrong sanitize scope, wrong remote layout) into something expensive to undo. See #730 / H2.

Phase 0: Bootstrap Gate

Read skills/_shared/bootstrap-gate.md and execute the gate check. If the gate is CLOSED, invoke skills/bootstrap/SKILL.md and wait for completion before proceeding. If the gate is OPEN, continue to Phase 1.

Phase 1: Target + Sphere (AUQ)

Ask via AskUserQuestion (per .claude/rules/ask-via-tool.md AUQ-001):

• Destination path — where the new repo will live on disk.
• Sphere — which account/host the new repo belongs to. Sphere conventions are host-local, not hardcoded here: read the operator's global CLAUDE.md (e.g. ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md) for the "Verzeichnis = Account" mapping (private vs. org vs. ventures trees, or whatever the host documents) and offer those as options.
• Extraction type — venture-spinout (a product leaving its incubator repo, gets a live remote and its own backlog) or sanitized-snapshot (a frozen, sanitized fork of content/code with no independent forward development expected).

Do not proceed to Phase 2 without explicit confirmation of all three.

Phase 2: Confidentiality / Sanitize Check (HARD-GATE)

<HARD-GATE> No copy happens until this checklist is confirmed by the operator. Do not rationalize past it because "it's all internal anyway." </HARD-GATE>

Checklist:

• Secrets/tokens — run gitleaks (or the repo's existing pre-commit scanner) over the target sub-path before copying.
• Live-infra references — hostnames, internal URLs, deploy targets that should not leak into a spun-out repo.
• Internal-only docs — anything under a private-only doc tree that should not travel.
• PII — names, emails, customer data in fixtures or sample content.

Inertness declaration pattern: infra-coupled scripts that will simply run empty in the new repo without their source tokens/infra (not broken, just inert there) get TABULATED in the FORK-NOTES (Phase 4) rather than silently deleted — deletion loses information a future maintainer needs; the table makes the inertness an explicit, reviewable fact.

Phase 3: Copy + Fresh git init

• Directory copy of the target sub-path — deliberately not git subtree split or git filter-repo. No shared history travels with the spinout by design; the new repo starts clean.
• Exclude build/dependency artifacts the same way a worktree would (node_modules, dist, .git, lockfile-derived caches).
• git init fresh in the destination.
• Add a provenance header to the new repo's README.md / CLAUDE.md (or AGENTS.md on Codex CLI): source repo, source path, extraction date, extraction type.

Phase 4: SNAPSHOT-FREEZE Marker in the Source Repo

Write a FORK-NOTES.md (or SNAPSHOT.md) at the original location in the source repo — the copy left behind, not the new repo. Contents:

• Provenance: source path, spinout date, "frozen — SSOT moved to <new-repo>".
• Remote map: where the new repo now lives (sphere + URL).
• Inertness table from Phase 2 (script → why it's inert here, not broken).

The corpus left behind at the original location is FROZEN from this point — cross-reference .claude/rules/development.md § Corpus Freeze Marker for the convention.

Phase 5: Remotes + Registration (AUQ)

Confirm each write via AskUserQuestion before executing:

• Create the new repo's remote(s) per sphere (push-URL discipline — any helper remote used only for cross-host fetch should have push DISABLED where that pattern applies).
• Register the new repo in the vault/portfolio index if one exists.
• Optionally seed an initial issue backlog in the new repo.

Anti-Patterns

• Scripting this runbook before the pattern has stabilized over 2-3 hand-runs.
• Skipping the Phase 2 sanitize gate "because it's internal anyway."
• Carrying shared git history into the spinout (subtree/filter-repo) — the new repo starts clean by design.
• Continuing to develop the source copy after Phase 4 instead of treating it as frozen.

See Also

• commands/spinout.md — slash-command entry point.
• skills/_shared/bootstrap-gate.md — Phase 0 gate contract.
• .claude/rules/ask-via-tool.md — AUQ-001 (every user decision goes through the tool, not prose).
• .claude/rules/parallel-sessions.md § PSA-003 — destructive-action safeguards apply to any write in Phase 3/4/5.