Pmstudio Sync

Doc Sync — Cascading Document Updater

What This Skill Does

Maintains consistency across a documentation ecosystem where one source change (e.g., a new meeting note) should cascade updates to multiple downstream documents (PRD, presentation, project memory).

This is NOT a background watcher. This skill is the Claude-side processor that:

• Reads a sync report or detects changes directly
• Extracts actionable content from new/modified source files
• Proposes specific edits to each downstream target
• Applies changes only after user approval

Prerequisites

Infrastructure (one-time setup)

The persistent detection layer runs outside Claude Code via /project-sync init:

| Component | Path | Purpose |

|-----------|------|---------|

| Orchestrator | ~/.claude/scripts/project-sync-orchestrator.sh | Email search + file detection + report generation |

| launchd agent | ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.claude.project-sync.<name>.plist | Background scheduler (every 2 hours) |

| State dir | ~/.claude/state/<project-name>/ | Logs, timestamps, cached config (outside OneDrive) |

Per-Project Config

Each project needs .sync-watch.json in its root:

{
  "project_name": "My Project",
  "watch_dirs": ["docs/meeting-notes", "docs/research"],
  "target_docs": {
    "tier1": [
      {
        "path": "docs/PRD.html",
        "name": "Product Requirements",
        "update_from": ["meeting-notes", "research"],
        "what": "Requirements, user stories, decisions"
      }
    ],
    "tier2": [
      {
        "path": "docs/presentation.html",
        "name": "Stakeholder Deck",
        "update_from": ["meeting-notes"],
        "what": "Stakeholder updates, timeline changes"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ignore_patterns": [".*", "*.tmp", "~$*"],
  "file_types": [".md", ".html", ".docx", ".xlsx", ".pdf"]
}

Invocation

Automatic (via session hook)

When you start a Claude Code session in a watched project with pending changes:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 SYNC WATCHER ► 3 new/modified file(s) detected
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Say "process sync report" to review and apply updates.

Manual

• /doc-sync — check for changes now and process
• /doc-sync path/to/new-file.md — process a specific source file
• process sync report — process a pending .sync-report.md

Process

Step 1: Detect Changes

If .sync-report.md exists: Read it — it lists all changed files with timestamps.

If no report (manual invocation):

!`bash ~/.claude/scripts/project-sync-orchestrator.sh "$(pwd)"`

Then read the generated .sync-report.md (written to project root or ~/.claude/state/<project-name>/sync-report.md).

If a specific file was passed as $ARGUMENTS: Use that file as the sole source.

If no changes detected: Report "All documents are in sync." and stop.

Step 2: Read Source Files

For each new/modified file detected:

• Skip binaries (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .pdf) — note them but don't read. Tell user: "Binary file detected — paste key content or convert to text."
• Read text files (.md, .html) in full
• Extract structured data from each:

For each source file, extract:
- NEW STAKEHOLDERS: Name, Role, Email, Group
- NEW DECISIONS: What was decided, by whom, date, impact
- NEW REQUIREMENTS: Functional/non-functional, priority, acceptance criteria
- NEW ACTION ITEMS: Owner, deadline, status
- NEW ARCHITECTURE: Design changes, module updates, integration changes
- NEW RISKS: Description, impact, mitigation
- VERSION CHANGES: What changed from previous version

Step 3: Read Config & Map Dependencies

Read .sync-watch.json to determine which target docs need which types of updates.

For each target doc in tier1 and tier2:

• Check if any source file matches its update_from patterns
• If yes → read the target doc to understand current state
• Identify exactly WHERE in the target doc the new content should go

Step 4: Propose Updates

Present a structured proposal — DO NOT edit anything yet:

## Sync Proposal

### Source: Meeting-Notes-2026-03-17.md
**New content extracted:**
- 2 new stakeholders (Jane Doe, John Smith)
- 1 decision (moved go-live to Q4)
- 3 action items

### Updates Needed:

**1. PRD.html** (Tier 1)
- Section 05 Stakeholders: Add Jane Doe (Tax Director), John Smith (IT Lead)
- Section 12 Timeline: Update go-live from Q3 → Q4
- Change log: Add v1.1 entry
- [Show exact diff preview for each change]

**2. Presentation.html** (Tier 1)
- Slide 7 (Team): Add 2 stakeholder cards
- Slide 12 (Timeline): Update milestone date
- [Show exact diff preview]

**3. CLAUDE.local.md** (Tier 1)
- Recent Changes: Add dated entry
- [Show exact content to append]

**4. Stakeholder-Directory.xlsx** (Tier 2)
- SKIP — binary file, manual update needed

Step 5: Get Approval

Ask user:

• "Apply all updates?" → proceed with all
• "Apply selectively?" → let user pick which targets
• "Skip for now?" → clean up report, do nothing
• User may also request modifications to the proposal

Step 6: Apply Updates

For each approved target:

• Read the target file (always re-read before editing — it may have changed)
• Apply edits using the Edit tool (not Write — preserve unchanged content)
• Verify the edit was applied correctly
• Log what was changed

Step 7: Clean Up & Update Memory

After all edits applied:

• Delete .sync-report.md (consumed)
• Update _temp/.last-sync-check timestamp
• Update CLAUDE.local.md Recent Changes section with a dated entry summarizing what was synced
• Report summary to user:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 DOC SYNC ► COMPLETE ✓
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Source files processed: 3
Documents updated: 4
  ✓ PRD.html — 3 edits (stakeholders, timeline, changelog)
  ✓ Presentation.html — 2 edits (team slide, timeline)
  ✓ CLAUDE.local.md — 1 edit (recent changes)
  ⚠ Stakeholder-Directory.xlsx — skipped (binary)

Manual follow-up needed:
  - Update Stakeholder-Directory.xlsx with 2 new contacts

Critical Rules

• NEVER edit without approval. Always show the proposal first. The user must explicitly approve.
• NEVER fabricate content. Only extract what's actually written in source files. If a meeting note doesn't mention a stakeholder's email, don't guess it.
• NEVER overwrite — always append/insert. Use Edit tool with precise old_string matching. Never rewrite entire files.
• ALWAYS read target docs before editing. They may have been modified since the report was generated.
• ALWAYS preserve existing formatting. Match the target doc's style (HTML structure, CSS classes, indentation patterns).
• Binary files are report-only. Flag them for manual update, don't attempt to modify.
• Version bumps: If the target doc has a version badge/number, increment it and add a changelog entry.

Adding This to a New Project

• Create .sync-watch.json in the project root (use template above)
• Run /project-sync init to set up the launchd cron job
• Done — the background orchestrator runs every 2 hours and generates .sync-report.md when changes are detected

Dependency Graph Pattern

For complex projects, document the update cascade in .sync-watch.json:

Meeting Notes ──→ PRD ──→ PRD Presentation
       │                         │
       ├──→ Main Presentation ←──┘
       │
       └──→ CLAUDE.local.md ←── (all changes)

This ensures that when a meeting note creates a PRD change, and that PRD change should also update the presentation, the full cascade is handled in one sync pass.