Pack the sources for a ChatGPT project

Purpose

A ChatGPT project searches its files one text file at a time, and each file has a token ceiling. A zip is not searched, a copied directory carries whatever sits in the working tree, and a hand-picked set of files carries the picker's assumptions. This skill hands ChatGPT the tracked sources of one commit as a few Markdown shards, each under the profile's token budget, and proves before anything is uploaded that no binary, gitlink or worktree, symbolic link, build output, generated projection, machine path or credential is in them.

It is not for a reviewer who can read the checkout (use repo-review), and not for a sandbox that unpacks archives and runs the gates (use pack-for-review with the audit profile of majordomus archive).

When to use

Before uploading the repository, or a part of it, to a ChatGPT project, and again whenever the conversation must see a newer commit. Also when an advisor consultation (scripts/advisor-consult) needs the sources in a ChatGPT project rather than in a prompt.

Procedure

1. Commit what the conversation is about

The pack is read from the git index and labelled with HEAD. Commit first; a plan whose index_matches_head is false names staged changes that the commit id does not contain, and uncommitted working-tree edits are never in a pack at all.

2. Plan, and read the verdict

majordomus pack plan chatgpt

Read every line before building. left out: counts what the profile drops by reason — worktree, link, artifact, binary, derived, excluded — and lists every dropped file that is not a projection. Exit 10 means a finding refuses the build:

• pack.leak: a selected file holds a machine path or a credential shape. Remove the value in a commit, or exclude the file in the profile. Never send it.
• pack.file_too_large, pack.too_many_shards: the selection does not fit what ChatGPT indexes. Narrow the profile in share/archive.yaml; never raise a limit past the reader's.
• pack.empty, pack.no_limits: the profile is wrong, not the tree.

Exit 12 means the tree could not be read, which is not a pass.

3. Build, which verifies

majordomus pack build chatgpt

The command writes 00-INDEX.md, the shards and pack.json under tmp/packs/, then reads them back with pack verify: every digest, no stray file, no forbidden path, no NUL byte, no file over the token budget, no leak. Anything but pack verify: clean and exit 0 means the pack is not sent. To re-check a pack later, before an upload:

majordomus pack verify tmp/packs/<repo>-chatgpt-<commit>

4. Upload and say what was uploaded

Upload 00-INDEX.md and every shard to the project. pack.json is the manifest for verification and may stay behind. Tell the conversation the commit, and ask it to cite files by path at that commit.

Output

The pack directory, the upload list (index plus shards), the commit and whether the index matched it, the token total, the counts left out by reason, and the pack verify verdict. An answer from the conversation is read against that commit, never against whatever the branch has moved to since.