focus

name	focus
description	Orient on a project or project family. Shows recent activity, milestones, and commits from event logs.
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read"]

Focus

Get oriented on a project before diving in. Pulls recent activity from the event logs — no git calls, no compilation, just what the hooks already captured.

Before running commands, resolve ROOT to the Session Cartographer plugin root. Prefer CARTOGRAPHER_ROOT, then CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT or PLUGIN_ROOT. Otherwise derive it from this skill's reported base directory (../.. from skills/focus), with the conventional checkout as a legacy fallback.

What it shows

• Recent session milestones (with git branch, dirty state from when they were logged)
• Recent commits (with type classification)
• Research activity
• Last session end events (what was happening when you left off)
• Related project threads + recurring technical maneuvers (from the co-occurrence graph, scripts/cooccurrence-graph.js)

How to use it

Run the search script with --project and a broad recency query:

CARTOGRAPHER_PURPOSE=focus bash "$ROOT/scripts/cartographer-search.sh" "recent activity" --project <PROJECT> --limit 20

The <PROJECT> argument supports:

• Direct project names: session-cartographer, scrutinizer2025
• Registry aliases: devtools, scrutinizer, psychodeli — expanded via project-registry.json to match all repos in the family

Step 1: Resolve the project

If the user gives a vague name, check project-registry.json for aliases:

jq -r '.aliases | keys[]' "$ROOT/project-registry.json"

Step 2: Search recent activity

CARTOGRAPHER_PURPOSE=focus bash "$ROOT/scripts/cartographer-search.sh" "recent activity" --project <PROJECT> --limit 20

Step 3: Surface related threads + maneuvers

The co-occurrence graph adds two orientation lenses the search can't: which other projects this one is worked on alongside (cross-project research threads), and which recurring technical maneuvers (release, deploy, merge, overleaf-sync…) it runs. Both resolve aliases/partial names automatically.

node "$ROOT/scripts/cooccurrence-graph.js" --related <PROJECT>
node "$ROOT/scripts/cooccurrence-graph.js" --maneuvers <PROJECT>

Skip either line silently if it prints (no co-active…) / (no maneuvers…). The maneuver map is an index, not a command store — to recover the actual command for a maneuver, grep the changelog on demand:

jq -r 'select(.project=="<PROJECT>" and (.summary|test("wrangler|gh release|netlify"))) | .summary' ~/Documents/dev/changelog.jsonl

Step 4: Summarize

Present a concise orientation:

• What branch/state was last recorded
• What was being worked on (from milestones + commits)
• Any recent research
• Related threads — projects co-active with this one, if any (a nudge toward cross-project context)
• Maneuvers — recurring technical procedures this project runs, if any
• Where the transcript is if they want full context

Examples

/focus scrutinizer
/focus devtools
/focus psychodeli