The Book of Works
Durable work
If it will run twice, it lives in the repo. Scripts, configs, knowledge: tracked, not transcript.
The ninth law says durable or it didn't happen; on the builders' floor that means the repository is the only place work is real. A script that lives in a scratch folder, a command that lives in shell history, a fix that lives in the transcript: each dies with the session, and the next session, the next machine, the next person pays to rediscover it. If it will run twice, it goes in the tree, tracked, the day it works.
The same discipline covers configuration. A variable slapped onto one command line is an incantation, true exactly once; the fix belongs in the program's defaults or a committed launcher, where the documented invocation just works, for the next run, on the next machine, with nothing extra remembered. If reproducing success requires remembering something, the work is not done.
How to practice it
If it runs twice, it's in the repo.
Helpers, probes, one-off converters: written in the tree from the first draft, deleted deliberately when obsolete. Scratch folders are for genuine one-shots.
No incantations.
A fix that lives in an environment variable on one command line is not a fix. Bake it into the default or the committed launcher.
Freeze the working invocation.
The command that finally worked is knowledge. Commit it as a script before the session that discovered it closes.
Knowledge follows the code.
The gotcha you just learned goes in the file it concerns, stated as a standing condition, not in the chat where you learned it.
Deep scripture: Codeuteronomy X — What is not committed did not happen