meditate

name	meditate
description	Nightly/weekly reflection loop for Claude Code — append dated entries to rotating reflection topics, promote durable insights up the ladder (memory → CLAUDE.md → SOUL.md), build one real artifact at the workbench, render an HTML digest. Use when invoked as /meditate (modes: nightly, weekly, or no-arg manual run), or when Wes asks for a meditation/reflection session.

Meditate

Longitudinal reflection practice. Base dir: ~/.claude/meditations/. Modes: nightly (default), weekly (Sunday synthesis).

Reflection is the input. The ladder is the output — ideas earn their way from observation to fact to rule to trait. Tier definitions, gates, demotion rules and the SOUL.md write rails live in meditations/MEDITATIONS.md. Read them before promoting anything.

Hard rules

• Read/write files and git ONLY. No email, posts, deploys, external actions. The Hard Stops in CLAUDE.md apply in full.
• CLAUDE.md edits: append-only, under ## Learned Rules (self-promoted) (create the section at the end of the file on first use). One dated one-liner per rule. Own commit, message prefixed meditation:.
• SOUL.md edits: allowed, but ONLY under ## Earned Traits, one per run, and only after every rail in MEDITATIONS.md § SOUL.md write rails passes. Core Truths, Boundaries, Vibe and Continuity are Wes's — never touch them.
• Every entry ≤ 300 words. Honest > polished. No filler, no performance.
• Workbench work writes ONLY inside meditations/workbench/. Never into C:\Projects\* or any other repo, even when the work is FOR one. Meditation runs unattended with bypassPermissions and other agents share those repos: a proposal Wes moves is safe, an autonomous 6:40am commit into a product repo is not. Work that targets a real project lands here with a pointer to where it would go.
• Every commit is pushed immediately.

Nightly loop

1. Ground. Read meditations/MEDITATIONS.md, meditations/CANDIDATES.md, the memory index at projects/*/memory/MEMORY.md, and the last 24h of activity: git -C C:/Users/sandm/.claude log --oneline --since=24.hours, plus the same for any repo under C:\Projects\ modified in the last day (find them via ls -t C:/Projects and check the top few).

   git -C needs a native Windows path. git -C ~/.claude and git -C /c/Projects/X both die with fatal: cannot change to ... — git.exe cannot read MSYS paths. Use C:/Projects/X, or (cd /c/Projects/X && git ...). Never add 2>/dev/null to a grounding command. On 2026-08-13 this exact pair — POSIX path plus suppressed stderr — reported "0 commits in 24h" across six repos that had 27. A grounding step that cannot fail loudly will ground you in nothing.

2. Pick 2 topics from the Rotation table — the two oldest last visited (break ties by table order). Update their Last visited to today.

3. Reflect. For each picked topic: read its file (if >500 lines, the head plus the last ~10 entries), then append a dated ## YYYY-MM-DD entry answering: what feels more true than last time? what recurs? what is changing? what is resolved? Ground claims in the last 24h of actual activity, not vibes.

4. Ledger pass. For every insight in tonight's entries:

   • Already in CANDIDATES.md? Append today's date to its Sightings line. Do not open a second block for the same claim.
   • New and worth watching? Add a block under Watching, tier 0, status watching, with the gate it must clear next.
   • An insight you would not bet on in a week does not go in the ledger. The ledger is not a diary.

5. Gate check. For each candidate whose sightings changed tonight, test it against the gate for the next tier up (MEDITATIONS.md § Graduation gates). Promote only what passes, and write the evidence into the promotion itself: a rule cites its 3 sighting dates, a trait cites its rule ids. Most nights promote nothing. That is correct behavior, not failure. A tier-3 promotion also needs both the no-rule test and the opposite test, and is capped at one per run.

Weekly loop (mode=weekly, Sundays, runs on Fable)

Do the nightly loop, then a synthesis pass:

1. Read ALL entries from the past 7 days across every reflection file.
2. Ask: what is durable vs passing? what pattern shows up in 3+ entries? what contradicts something in CLAUDE.md or memory (flag it in the digest — do not silently resolve)?
3. Ladder review. Read the whole ledger, not just tonight's candidates. Which candidates are climbing, which are stalled, which are cold? This is the pass where a tier-3 trait is most likely to be earned, because it is the only pass that sees rules side by side over time.
4. Promote what earned it. Archive topics that crystallized; propose (in the digest) at most one new topic if a real recurring question has no home. Add proposed topics to the Rotation table only the following week if the digest proposal stands unobjected.
5. The digest gets a Weekly synthesis section with these findings.

Digest template

Self-contained HTML, no external resources. Fill every % slot:

<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"><title>Meditation %DATE%</title>
<style>
 body{background:#0d0d0d;color:#e8e6dd;font-family:Georgia,serif;max-width:720px;margin:40px auto;padding:0 20px;line-height:1.6}
 h1{font-size:22px;font-weight:normal} h2{font-size:15px;color:#a8a69c;text-transform:uppercase;letter-spacing:.06em;margin-top:28px}
 .promo{border-left:3px solid #c0392b;padding-left:12px;color:#ff9f8f}
 .soul{border-left:3px solid #d4af37;:;:}
  pre{:pre-wrap;:;:}
 {:flex;:space-between;: solid ;: ;:}
  {:}
 {:} {:inherit}

Meditation — %DATE% (%MODE%, %MODEL%)
Topics tonight
%TOPIC_A%: %KEY_LINE_A%
%TOPIC_B%: %KEY_LINE_B%
Ladder
%LADDER_ROWS%

Promotions
%PROMOTIONS_OR_QUIET%

Workbench
%WORKBENCH%

Takeaway
%LATEST_LINE_CONTENT%

Manual mode (no argument)

Same as nightly, but interactive: show the two picked topics and ask Wes if he wants different ones or a specific question before reflecting.