daily

name	daily
type	skill
category	instruction
description	Daily note lifecycle — compose and maintain a factual daily note. Reports the state of the day; does not prioritise or recommend. SSoT for daily note structure.
triggers	["daily list","daily note","morning briefing","update daily","daily update"]
modifies_files	true
needs_task	false
mode	execution
domain	["operations"]
allowed-tools	Read,Bash,Grep,Write,Edit,AskUserQuestion,Skill,mcp__pkb__delete,mcp__pkb__get_task,mcp__pkb__list_tasks,mcp__pkb__task_summary,mcp__pkb__complete_task
owner	pauli
version	5.4.0
permalink	skills-daily

Daily Note

Compose and maintain the daily note at $ACA_DATA/daily/YYYYMMDD-daily.md (filename uses today's date, date +%Y%m%d). On every run, point the symlink at it: ln -snf daily/YYYYMMDD-daily.md $ACA_DATA/daily.md.

Fill out the template in references/note-template.md. That file is the structural SSoT — follow its section order.

What this note is

A factual, reportive snapshot of the day: what happened, what's open, what's due, what's in the inbox. It is not prescriptive — never rank what the user should do next or suggest a sequence. Forward prioritisation is the user's, in ### My priorities (create the empty heading; never write under it).

Core rules

• Update throughout the day. Re-run freely; update in place with Edit, not full rewrites. Consolidate where it helps readability.
• Never remove user notes. Preserve everything the user wrote, plus their ticks ([x]) and annotations, across regenerations. Match items by ID/PR/subject and carry ticks forward.
• You may turn user notes into neat, well-formatted prose — but only if you lose no truth. When unsure, keep the original wording.
• No empty sections. Omit a section rather than render an empty heading. On a morning with no sessions yet, omit Today's Log entirely.
• Today's Log is reconstructed from primary sources, never substituted. Before writing Today's Log you MUST open today's session transcripts — $AOPS_SESSIONS/transcripts/$(date +%Y-%m)/$(date +%Y%m%d)-*-claude-*.md (prefer -abridged.md) — and reconstruct the day from them. Assembling it from artifacts already in the note (prior retro stamps, yesterday's log) or from the reconcile sweep's merged-PR list is a criterion substitution: it reproduces the file, not the day. If no same-day interactive transcript exists, omit the section — do not back-fill it from second-hand artifacts.

Tools you may invoke

Available, not mandatory steps. Use them when the day's content calls for them:

• /email --daily — triage the inbox into tasks + FYI items.
• /q — capture a task (e.g. routing a mobile capture from $ACA_DATA/notes/mobile-captures/; delete the original with mcp__pkb__delete once it's routed).
• /remember — persist durable knowledge.
• /decision-extract — expand the pending-decisions list if the user wants detail.
• /strategy — if the user signals they want a priorities reset.

Safety rules (load-bearing)

• Verify carryover against live PKB before listing. For each task carried from yesterday, call mcp__pkb__get_task; drop it if it's missing, done, cancelled, or already ticked in today's note. Copying blindly produces phantom-overdue items.
• PR display state may read $AOPS_SESSIONS/state/pr-state.json for the "Outstanding Workflows" / open-PR snapshot (it is cheap and good enough for a display list). Do NOT run a bulk gh pr list just to populate that display. The reconcile sweep below is the exception: it resolves and checks PRs one task at a time against live gh, because a pre-baked feed's recent-window misses older merges and silently leaves tasks parked.
• Consequence text is printed verbatim, never paraphrased. Pull it from the task, or from a linked target in the task's goals field.
• Counts come from mcp__pkb__task_summary. Never count tasks yourself — aggregation is the PKB's job.

Escalated deadlines (simple rule)

Hoist a due task into a ## 🚨 ESCALATED DEADLINES callout when it meets any of these conditions:

• Overdue (past due date) AND ≥ SEV2; or
• Due within ~2 days AND ≥ SEV3; or
• Due within ~2 days AND ≥ SEV2 AND on an immovable external deadline.

Render its verbatim consequence text; drop it from the Status deadline list to avoid duplication. Do not hoist movable SEV2 tasks unless they are also overdue — that is false urgency inflation. Do not compute tiers or ratios — the full escalation model lives in [[importance-visibility-escalation]], and a follow-up PKB-tool task will compute a real escalation tier upstream.

Reconcile and cross-link

Two statuses, two fates — do not conflate them

This sweep touches two statuses that look adjacent but mean opposite things. Getting this wrong is the live failure this step exists to prevent (#1863): a human-decision task with no PR gets enumerated as "parked PR backlog", reconciled against a PR that does not exist, left unchanged every run, and silently falls off the radar.

• status: merge_ready = parked on a PR. Canonically "under review — PR open, awaiting CI, review, or iteration" ([[taxonomy#status-values-and-transitions]] is the SSoT for the full protocol). The PR is the source of truth for whether it can close. This is the PR-reconcile set: resolve its PR and act on the live state.
• status: review = parked on a human. Canonically "mid-flight human block — requires judgment/direction before work can proceed" ([[taxonomy#status-values-and-transitions]]). It is actionable work waiting on Nic (or an agent), not on a merge. Most status: review tasks have no PR at all (academic reading notes, design decisions, validation-protocol calls, "needs Nic's direction" items). A status: review task is closed by a decision, never by an auto-reconcile.

The rule that follows from this: never auto-close a review task, and never let a no-PR review task be treated as parked backlog and disappear. It is awaiting attention — surface it every run.

Task completion sweep (required every run)

Run two passes with different intents. Resolve PRs against live GitHub, not a pre-baked feed — pr-state.json's recent_merged is a recent-window snapshot; a task whose PR merged outside that window never matches and stays silently parked. The canonical reconcile contract is [[workflows-reconcile]] — structured fields drive the match, live gh confirms the state.

Pass A — merge_ready (PR-reconcile, may auto-close):

1. Fetch the parked-on-PR set. Call mcp__pkb__list_tasks(status="merge_ready"). Collect every result — do not spot-check or keyword-search a subset.

2. Resolve each task's PR from its structured fields (no prose parsing — the [[workflows-reconcile]] "guaranteed structured" surface). For each task, in order:

   • pr_url frontmatter (e.g. https://github.com/org/repo/pull/1859) — the authoritative source; gives both repo (org/repo) and PR number.
   • branch frontmatter — resolve via gh pr list --repo <repo> --head <branch> --state all --json number,state when no pr_url.
   • A pure-integer tag (e.g. 1858) — a PR number, but ambiguous without a repo; only usable once you know the task's repo (its project/repo field). Treat a bare number with no repo as unresolved.
   • A merge_ready task that resolves to no concrete <repo>#<number> is itself anomalous — merge_ready asserts a PR exists. Leave it unchanged and surface it under "Needs your call" as merge_ready-without-PR (a worker likely set the status without opening a PR). Do not auto-close.

3. Check live PR state per task. For each resolved <repo>#<number>, run gh pr view <number> --repo <repo> --json state,mergedAt,url. Do this per task — one cheap call each, correct regardless of when the PR merged. Batch them in a single Bash loop if you like; do not substitute the feed's recent_merged list.

4. Act on the live state:

   • MERGED → the task's own deliverable shipped: call mcp__pkb__complete_task with the PR URL and mergedAt in the evidence. No human confirmation needed — except the guards below.
   • OPEN → genuinely in-flight; leave parked (correctly merge_ready).
   • CLOSED (not merged) → the PR was rejected or abandoned; do NOT auto-close the task. Surface under "Needs your call" (refile-or-drop decision).
   • No PR / not found → handled in step 2 (surface as merge_ready-without-PR).

Pass B — review (human-block, never auto-close):

1. Fetch the parked-on-human set. Call mcp__pkb__list_tasks(status="review"). These are awaiting a decision, not a merge — none of them auto-closes here.

2. A review task closes only on the decision, never on a PR auto-match. For each task:

   • Has a pr_url / resolvable PR (the legitimate overlap: a PR is open and the task also needs Nic's judgment, e.g. a doctrine PR awaiting his call): resolve and check live state exactly as Pass A step 3, but the live state never auto-closes it. If MERGED, surface under "Needs your call" as "PR merged — confirm the decision and close" (the merge is evidence, not authority). If OPEN/CLOSED, surface with that state noted. The human still owns the close.
   • No PR (the common case — reading notes, design calls, "needs Nic's direction"): this is actionable work waiting on attention. Surface it under "Needs your call" as awaiting-your-decision, with its title and one-line ask. Do not leave it silent and do not call it parked. Re-surfacing it every run is the whole point — it must not fall off the radar.

3. If a review task is plainly mis-statused (e.g. node_type: reference/review reading-note or paper record that was never a task and carries no actionable ask), surface it once under "Needs your call" as mis-statused — should leave the review queue so Nic can re-file or drop it. Do not silently mutate it.

Guards (both passes — never violate, apply before any close):

• Never close on doubt. If the task body flags an unresolved condition (e.g. "an unauthorised edit must be stripped before merge", a pending live-host verification the worker cannot perform), surface under "Needs your call" even when the PR shows MERGED.
• Never close a parent/epic that has open children. Before closing, confirm the task is a leaf (or all its children are already done/cancelled). A merged parent PR with genuine open follow-up children is surfaced, not closed — do NOT cascade-close real downstream work. (A pure scope-note child the PR delivered may be closed recursively; a real independent follow-up task may not.)
• Never auto-close a review task. review means a human is the gate (see "Two statuses" above). The most a sweep does to a review task is surface it — auto-close belongs to Pass A (merge_ready) only.
• Never touch academic / peer-review / Nic-decision items. Tasks that are inherently the user's call (peer reviews, funding assessments, design decisions awaiting his judgment) are surfaced, never auto-closed, regardless of any linked PR.

Report. In the daily note (Work Log or "What Needs Attention"): N tasks auto-closed against merged PRs (merge_ready); P review tasks awaiting your decision (re-surfaced); M surfaced for your call (closed-without-merge / merge_ready-without-PR / mis-statused / epic-with-open-children). The review count is reported as work-awaiting-you, never folded into a "parked" total.

Cross-linking (when a session maps to a task)

You may append a ## Progress note or tick checklist items on a task that today's accomplishment maps to. Never mark a parent task done, never delete task content.

Output

Commit the note (don't leave it for the sync): cd "$ACA_DATA" && git add "daily/$(date +%Y%m%d)-daily.md" daily.md && { git diff --cached --quiet || git commit -m "daily: note for $(date +%Y-%m-%d)"; } — the guard makes no-op re-runs exit 0. If a pre-commit hook fails, let it surface; don't bypass it. Then end with a one-line confirmation: "Daily note updated. Use /pull to start work." and halt.