re-create — Controlled Erasure & Rebuild Protocol

Overview

Hollow Purple is Gojo's most destructive technique — blue and red combined into total erasure of the target. But Gojo doesn't use it carelessly. He knows exactly what he's erasing and why. Same here: this skill is the nuclear option, invoked only when patching is the wrong call, executed with full control over what gets erased and what must survive.

Rewrites are dangerous not because rebuilding is hard, but because it is easy to silently erase behavior that was working and expected. This skill enforces a complete inventory of what must survive before a single line is deleted, and a full verification that everything survived after the rebuild.

When to Use This Skill

• Use when a file, module, or component needs to be completely deleted and rewritten from scratch
• Use when structural rot is so deep that individual fixes would only make it worse
• Use when accumulated technical debt makes the code unmaintainable
• Use when the target is fundamentally broken and beyond saving
• DO NOT use for partial refactors, single-function fixes, or targeted edits

How It Works

PHASE 1 — Justify the Erasure

The AI must prove that a full rewrite is necessary. It must answer all of the following:

1. What specifically is broken or unsalvageable?
   • Not "it's messy" — specific structural problems that make targeted fixes impossible or counterproductive
2. Why would targeted edits make things worse, not better?
   • Patching on top of rot, compounding complexity, architectural mismatch
3. What is the concrete cost of keeping the current implementation?
   • Maintenance burden, bug surface, performance, developer velocity

If the AI cannot clearly answer all three, it must fall back to targeted edits instead of a rewrite. A rewrite is not a reward for messy code — it is a last resort.

The bar is high. "This code is ugly" does not justify hollow purple. "The architecture assumes X but the system now requires Y and every patch makes the mismatch worse" does.

PHASE 2 — Read the Target Completely

Before proposing deletion, the AI must read the entire target (file, module, or component) in full.

The AI must identify and catalog:

1. Public interfaces — functions, classes, types, or exports that other parts of the codebase call
2. Implicit contracts — behaviors that other files depend on even if not formally typed
3. Working behaviors — things the current implementation does correctly that must continue to work
4. Non-obvious logic — edge cases, guards, or special handling that looks incidental but is intentional
5. Blast radius — every file in the codebase that imports from or depends on the target

The AI cannot skip this phase even if it has read the file before. The purpose is not familiarity — it is building the Preservation List.

PHASE 3 — Erasure Declaration (User Must Confirm)

The AI outputs a complete erasure plan and waits for user confirmation before deleting or writing anything.

HOLLOW PURPLE — ERASURE PLAN
─────────────────────────────────────────
TARGET FOR ERASURE:
  [file path or module name]

WHY TARGETED FIXES ARE WRONG:
  [specific justification — architectural rot, fundamental mismatch, etc.]

PRESERVATION LIST (must survive the rewrite):
  - [public interface / export 1] → [what it does, who depends on it]
  - [public interface / export 2] → [what it does, who depends on it]
  - [working behavior 1]          → [what it does, why it must be kept]
  - [non-obvious logic 1]         → [what it guards against]

BLAST RADIUS (files that depend on the target):
  - [file path] → depends on [what specifically]
  - [file path] → depends on [what specifically]

NEW IMPLEMENTATION PLAN:
  [Description of what the rebuild will look like — structure, approach, key decisions]

WHAT WILL NOT BE PRESERVED:
  [Anything intentionally dropped and why — dead code, deprecated behavior, etc.]
─────────────────────────────────────────
Confirm to proceed with erasure and rebuild.

Nothing is deleted until the user explicitly confirms. A reply of "yes", "confirmed", "do it", or equivalent counts. Silence does not.

PHASE 4 — Controlled Erasure

User confirms → the target is deleted. Rules for this phase:

• Delete cleanly. Not commented out, not renamed to _old, not archived in place — deleted.

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