| name | journal |
| description | Append a dated entry to a personal engineering journal at ~/.claude/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Use to capture decisions, observations, or reflections that aren't worth a commit message but shouldn't be lost. |
| when_to_use | User asks to "journal", "note", "log", "capture", or "remember" something that's reflective rather than actionable. Also after a significant debugging session, design decision, or postmortem. |
/journal
Append a timestamped entry to today's journal file under ~/.claude/journal/. Plain Markdown, one file per day.
When to invoke
- User says "journal this", "log this", "note this for later".
- After completing a multi-day investigation, decision, or postmortem worth remembering.
- The user reflects on something — not a TODO, not a commit, just a thought.
Inputs
- The text to record (prompt, paste, or extracted from the recent conversation).
- Optional category tag:
decision | observation | retro | idea | learning.
Outputs
- Appends to
~/.claude/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md (creates the file if absent).
- Each entry:
## HH:MM — <category> heading + body.
- Confirms back: file path + first 80 chars of the entry.
Steps
- Resolve today's date in user's local timezone — file path is
~/.claude/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md.
- If the file doesn't exist, create it with a top heading
# Journal — YYYY-MM-DD.
- Append a new section:
## HH:MM — <category> then a blank line then the entry body.
- Confirm with the path and a one-line preview.
Notes
- Journals are personal. Don't reference them in committed code or PRs.
- This is for prose, not structured data. If you want todos, use
/todo instead.
