A documented, repeatable whole-repo tidy that returns a project to a clean shipped baseline — no stray branches, no PR limbo, current-state docs matching the code, dev and main in sync and green. Every project runs the same sweep instead of improvising one, so drift is caught on a cadence rather than whenever someone notices. Proposed by Random AI Prompt after a sweep found status.md five versions stale, eight merged branches lingering, and an open Dependabot PR. The canonical copy is in the repository at hub/standards/maintenance-sweep.md; it composes existing standards rather than restating them, and like every cross-cutting procedure it is audit-first, act only on go-ahead.

The sweep

• Audit read-only first. Fetch and prune, then enumerate local and remote branches, open PRs and issues, and CI health — a complete picture before touching anything.
• Triage PRs and issues — surface, don’t auto-act. Every open item (Dependabot PRs included) is a decision for the owner. An unattended run reports and waits; it never merges, closes, or pushes a PR on its own.
• Close merged branches only (git branch -d, never -D), confirmed merged first. Target end state: only main and dev, plus any deliberately-kept release branch.
• Ship dev → main per the git workflow — including the SemVer gate and the mandatory back-merge so dev contains main afterward.
• Reconcile current-state docs with the code per docs-lifecycle: status.md, the health tables, any “pending review” phrasing for work that shipped.
• Verify and record — run the test gate, then note the sweep in the session log.