Add best-practices library, knowledge distillation pipeline settings, and first session log

- best-practices/: 11 topic files + INDEX.md extracted from cluster-bootstrap
  and custom-claude-skills (validation, k8s, helm, ansible, secrets, debugging, etc.)
- settings.yaml: pipeline config (log retention, tracked projects, max logs per run)
- CLAUDE.md: updated with best-practices loading and pipeline documentation
- memory/log/: first session log demonstrating the format

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

best-practices/validation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+# Validation & Deployment
+
+## Validate Locally, Deploy Once
+
+The single biggest time sink across projects is "deploy first, validate later." Real-world stats from a 9-milestone infrastructure project showed 50-60% of commits were fixes that could have been caught locally.
+
+**Always validate before pushing:**
+- `helm template` for Helm chart values
+- `kustomize build` (or `kubectl kustomize`) for Kustomize apps
+- `kubectl apply --dry-run=server` for K8s naming/schema issues
+- `docker run <app> validate-configuration` for apps that support it (Authelia, Homepage, etc.)
+- `docker inspect` for unfamiliar container images before writing init containers
+- Lint/typecheck/test for application code
+
+**Batch fixes locally, push once.** Each push-sync-crash-fix cycle wastes minutes and clutters Git history.
+
+## Test the Full Chain Immediately
+
+After wiring up any new service or endpoint, test end-to-end from the user's perspective right away. Don't assume intermediate steps working means the whole chain works.
+
+- `curl --resolve domain:443:<ip> https://domain` to test bypassing DNS/proxy layers
+- Test from the actual consumer (not same-namespace test pods for network policies)
+- Test DNS resolution after deploying FQDN-based policies
+
+## Pre-Flight Checks
+
+Before starting a deploy or automation phase:
+- Verify SSH keys are loaded (`ssh -T git@<host>`)
+- Confirm environment variables and credentials are available
+- Check that the target environment is in the expected state
+- Verify DNS records resolve as expected
+
+## Scripts That Change Config Must Self-Verify
+
+After updating and restarting a service, the script should test that the change actually took effect (e.g., curl an API endpoint, check a config value). A "success" message without verification hides failures.