journal-note

name	journal-note
description	Use when Les asks to log, capture, or journal what was worked on this session, jot a quick note or TIL down for later, or flag something as a blog candidate — anything destined for his daily Obsidian journal.

Journal Note

Overview

Appends a note to Les's daily Obsidian journal in his house style — either a full ## entry under # notes (session writeups, blog seeds) or a one-line bullet under # TIL (quick learnings). Captured notes are raw material the daily-blog-post-composer and weeknotes-blog-post-composer skills compose from later, so favor reusable detail over polish.

Locate today's file

~/Documents/Obsidian/main/journals/<YYYY>/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md

Derive the path from the date: date "+%Y/%Y-%m-%d". The file usually already exists (Obsidian daily template) with headings: # daily / today / tonight / tomorrow / this week / [[someday]] / followup / TIL / notes. Always Read it first, then insert into the correct existing section — never reorder or rewrite other content (standup, therapy, tasks stay untouched). If the file is missing, create it with at least # TIL and # notes headings.

Two cases

1. Session note → ## subsection appended to the end of # notes. For "log what we did", writeups, anything blog-worthy.

## <lowercase topic>

- problem / context in one line
- what was built + the stack, terse
- the interesting bit — the gotcha, war story, or "aha" (this is the blog hook)
- blog angles: a few bullets to pull from later

2. Quick learning → single bullet under # TIL. No subsection, one line.

- tailscale node IP forwarded :8065 but refused :2586 → the service was on the wrong host

When unsure which: a paragraph's worth of story → # notes; a single fact or lesson → # TIL. A future to-do that came up → bullet under # followup.

House style (match the existing file)

• lowercase ## headings; terse bullets; first-person lowercase prose ("i ran…")
• [[wikilinks]] for projects, tools, people, entities
• nest detail with tab indents
• *(blog candidate)* italic tag under the heading when relevant
• blog-seed depth: enough to reconstruct the story weeks later, not a bare one-liner

Common mistakes

• Wrong section — full writeup is a ## under # notes; a single learning is a bullet under # TIL. Don't drop a paragraph into TIL.
• Too shallow for a blog candidate — capture the narrative hook (the gotcha/war story), not just "set up X".
• Rewriting the file — Read and insert into the existing section; leave everything else alone.
• Over-polishing — keep it journal-terse; the blog composer skills do the polishing.