# PFES-ENG-044 — Engineering Stewardship

**Status:** Core cultural principle  
**Knowledge Cycle Stages:** All stages

## Purpose

Leave Project Frankenstein in a healthier state after every significant engineering activity.

## Engineering Problem

Projects can accumulate tools, reports, outputs, and contradictions faster than they accumulate usable understanding.

## Historical Engineering Evolution

PFES and the migration/retention process were created to increase knowledge while reducing entropy.

## Engineering Discoveries

- Stewardship includes preservation and deletion.
- Project health matters more than file count or code volume.

## Architectural Decisions

- Migrate knowledge before retiring sources.
- Validate constraints before accepting them.
- Build missing tools when engineering need justifies it.

## Knowledge Produced

- Healthier repositories
- Clearer knowledge
- Better tools
- Reduced repeated work

## Knowledge Consumed

- Migration reports
- Retention decisions
- Validation

## Current Engineering State

Phase 2 treats every source pack as both a knowledge-migration batch and a curation opportunity.

## Engineering Lessons

- A limitation caused by missing tooling may be the next engineering problem, not a permanent constraint.

## Negative Knowledge

Project Frankenstein no longer assumes:

- More files always mean more preservation.
- Today's tools define tomorrow's objectives.

## Current Implementations

- PFES migration policy
- Versioned snapshots
- Retention review

## Future Implementations

- Automated stewardship reports
- Repository health metrics

## Open Questions

To be expanded during engineering review.

## Why This Chapter Exists

Stewardship ensures the project grows in capability without decaying in clarity.
