agentic-workflows-portfolio

Workspace Recovery Kit

When my laptop and its drive died, I rebuilt 17 projects from 21 GitHub repos on a borrowed Windows machine in one session, then wrote the checklist and script so the next rebuild takes minutes.

The Problem

On 21 July 2026 my Mac and its hard drive failed. The project code was safe on GitHub. Everything outside git was gone: the Claude Code skills I had built, the record of which secret goes in which project, and the folder layout that ties related repos together.

Recovery took a full session of detective work on a borrowed Windows laptop. On top of that, a plain git clone failed on three repos and left their folders empty.

The Solution

A small repository that holds everything a new machine needs and git does not carry:

1. A migration checklist written for Claude to follow. It installs Git and the GitHub CLI with winget, authenticates, sets the git identity, clones everything and restores the customizations. A fresh Claude Code session with no memory can run it step by step.
2. A one-command restore script (clone-all.ps1). It recreates the whole workspace folder from GitHub, including the three parent folders that group related repos (for example, one project that spans a monitoring system and two regional dashboards).
3. A secrets checklist by name only. Every environment variable each project needs, with no values. The values live in a password manager and in each provider’s dashboard.
4. A backup of the user-level Claude Code skills that live outside any project repo.
5. A project map. The 21 repos sorted into 17 real projects, with a line on what each one is.

Result

• 17 projects restored on a new operating system.
• The next rebuild is a checklist plus one script.
• The Windows clone failure is fixed for good. Three repos carried a macOS Finder file named Icon followed by a carriage return, a character Windows does not allow in file names. The script detects the failed checkout and checks out everything except that one file.

Key Decisions

Write the checklist for the agent. I work through Claude Code, so the reader of a recovery guide is likely to be a fresh Claude session. The steps are explicit enough for it to run without guessing, and they say where a human has to step in (the GitHub login in a browser).

Names of secrets, never values. A list of variable names is safe to keep in git and tells you exactly what to go and collect. Values in git would turn a backup into a leak.

Fix the root cause in the script. The Icon file problem would bite every future clone on Windows. Handling it once in the restore script means nobody has to remember it.

Under the Hood

Stack: PowerShell, Git, GitHub CLI, Markdown. About 150 lines in all.

How to Demo It

1. Show the project map: 21 repos, 17 projects, three grouped folders.
2. Open the migration checklist and read the first three steps.
3. Run clone-all.ps1 against an empty folder and show the workspace appear, including a repo that would have failed a plain clone.

Limitations & Setup

• Needs an interactive GitHub login in a browser before the script runs.
• Secrets still have to be re-entered by hand from the password manager.
• The skill backup is a copy. It has to be refreshed when a skill changes.

Demo Pitch

“My laptop died with 17 projects on it. The code was on GitHub, but nothing else was. After one session of rebuilding, I wrote the recovery kit I wish I’d had: one checklist an AI agent can follow, one restore script, and a list of every secret by name. If your small team’s setup lives in one person’s head, this takes an afternoon to write.”