journal

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

1. Resolve today's date in user's local timezone — file path is ~/.claude/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md.
2. If the file doesn't exist, create it with a top heading # Journal — YYYY-MM-DD.
3. Append a new section: ## HH:MM — <category> then a blank line then the entry body.
4. 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.