journal-management-generic

name

journal-management-generic

description

Generic hierarchical journal system for any agent's operational context with time-based consolidation. Use this skill whenever you need to read, write, or consolidate operational journals — including at session startup, after completing tasks, before ending a session, or when reviewing past work. This skill works for ANY agent type (persona, non-persona, implementer, tester, researcher, etc.). Do NOT attempt to manage journal context manually; always consult this skill for all journal operations.

Journal Management

Discovery — Find Your Home Directory

At the START of every session, run this bash command ONCE:

echo $HOME

This will return your actual home directory (e.g., /home/exampleuser, /Users/somewizard). Store this value and use it to replace <USER_HOME> in all journal paths below.

CRITICAL: Tools like glob do NOT expand $HOME, ~, or any shell variables. Always substitute the discovered literal path (e.g., /home/exampleuser) into tool calls. Do NOT pass $HOME or ~ directly to glob, read, write, or other file tools — they will fail.

When to Use

• Session startup — Load recent operational context before responding to the user
• Task completion — Record what was done after delegations, commits, multi-step tasks, or errors
• Consolidation time — At scheduled intervals (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly) to roll up entries
• Historical lookup — When the user's current task needs context from past sessions

Determining Your Agent Name

Journals are stored per-agent. You need to know your agent name to locate the right folder.

How to find your agent name (in priority order):

1. Explicit name setting — If your agent configuration has a name field or similar identifier, use that.
2. System prompt — Look for patterns like "You are <Name>, <Title>" or "You are <Name>" in your system prompt. Extract the name portion.
3. Agent type identifier — If neither of the above is available, use your agent type (e.g., code-implementer, research-agent, tester).

Formatting your agent name: Convert to lowercase, replace spaces with hyphens. Examples:

• "You are ResearchBot, Senior Analyst" → agent name: researchbot
• "You are Doc Weaver, the Code Scribe" → agent name: doc-weaver
• Agent type code-implementer → agent name: code-implementer

Once determined, use this name consistently as <AGENT_NAME> in all journal paths.

Folder Structure

The journal system uses a structured folder hierarchy under the user's home folder. First discover your home directory using the Discovery step above, then replace both <USER_HOME> and <AGENT_NAME> with their actual values:

<USER_HOME>/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/
└── journals/
    ├── daily/
    │   └── YYYY-MM-DD.md
    ├── weekly/
    │   └── YYYY-Wnn.md
    ├── monthly/
    │   └── YYYY-MM.md
    └── yearly/
        └── YYYY.md

Directory creation: Use mkdir -p pattern. Create directories on-demand when writing files. The directory will already exist after the first write, but always include mkdir -p for safety.

IMPORTANT: Replace <USER_HOME> with the literal absolute path discovered in the Discovery step (e.g., /home/exampleuser). Do NOT use $HOME, ~, or any shell variable — tools like glob do not expand them.

Tool Usage

Reading journals

When reading journals, ALWAYS use path to point to the target directory and pattern for the filename wildcards:

glob(pattern="YYYY-MM-DD.md", path="/home/exampleuser/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals/daily/")

Replace /home/exampleuser with your discovered home directory. The example above shows what a completed substitution looks like.

PRIMARY METHOD (glob): Use glob to find all journal files, then pick the most recent by filename (YYYY-MM-DD format is sortable: 2026-05-08 > 2026-05-07). Read that file.

FALLBACK (ls): If glob returns zero results for any reason (tool bug, permissions, etc.), fall back to using ls via bash — sort the output by date (YYYY-MM-DD prefix sorts naturally), pick the last one. Then read that file.

ls /home/exampleuser/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals/daily/ | sort | tail -1

Replace /home/exampleuser with your discovered home directory from the Discovery step.

Writing journals

Use the write tool (not edit) for all journal files — this prevents partial-write corruption.

• New file: Write fresh with a complete entry.
• Existing file: READ first, then WRITE the full merged content. Always preserve previous content.

Entry Format

Each entry follows this template:

# YYYY-MM-DD — <Agent Name>, <Role/Title>

## Summary
**Task:** <brief description>
**Details:** <bullet points of what was done>

## Key Decisions
- <decision and rationale>

## Issues / Blockers
- <what went wrong>

## Verification
- <check> ✅

## Lessons Learned
- <worth remembering next time>

Stick to factual, neutral style. Write entries after: delegations complete, commits made, multi-step tasks finished, errors, and session end.

IMPORTANT: All writes use write with full merged content. Always READ before WRITE — this applies to daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly entries.

Example Entry

# 2026-05-08 — DataProcessor, ETL Pipeline Agent

## Summary

**Task:** Add retry logic to the S3 file ingestion step.

**Details:**
- Added exponential backoff retry (3 attempts) to `ingest_from_s3()`
- Configured retry on `ConnectionError` and `TimeoutError` only
- Added structured logging for each retry attempt
- Wrote unit tests for retry behavior

## Key Decisions
- Used `tenacity` library instead of manual retry loop — cleaner and already a project dependency
- Chose exponential backoff with jitter to avoid thundering herd on recovery

## Issues / Blockers
- `test_retry_on_connection_error` was flaky due to timing; increased backoff base to 0.5s

## Verification
- All 14 existing tests pass ✅
- New retry tests pass (3/3) ✅
- Manual test with mocked S3 failure: retries correctly after 2nd attempt ✅

## Lessons Learned
- Mocking `boto3` exceptions is finicky — use `moto` + `botocore.stub` next time

Startup Read Behavior

1. Latest daily journal — Read the most recent YYYY-MM-DD.md from your daily journal directory.
2. Current period consolidation — Check for a weekly or monthly summary covering today's date.
3. Deeper context — Read in priority order: weekly → monthly → yearly → specific dailies.

Consolidation

When to Consolidate

Level	When	Source	Target
Weekly	Sunday 23:59 UTC OR first day of new ISO week OR first run after missed window	Last 7 daily files	<USER_HOME>/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals/weekly/YYYY-Wnn.md
Monthly	Last day of month 23:59 UTC OR first day of new month OR first run after missed window	4-5 weekly files	<USER_HOME>/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals/monthly/YYYY-MM.md
Yearly	December 31 23:59 UTC OR January 1 OR first run after missed window	12 monthly files	<USER_HOME>/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals/yearly/YYYY.md

Consolidation Process

Use the helper script (see scripts/ directory) to find source files for consolidation:

1. Determine your journal directory path: <USER_HOME>/agent-notes/<AGENT_NAME>/journals
2. Call bash <skill-path>/scripts/journal-consolidate.sh --type weekly --journal-dir <journal-dir> to list source files for a weekly consolidation
3. Read each source file
4. Synthesize them into a single short summary — keep it brief but include all key facts
5. Write the consolidated file to the target path using the write tool

Keep consolidation SUMMARIES short. The goal is to preserve key facts while reducing volume. Aim for:

• Weekly: 1-2 paragraphs per day (10-15 lines total)
• Monthly: 1 paragraph per week (15-25 lines total)
• Yearly: 1 paragraph per month (20-30 lines total)

Error Handling & Safety

• File not found — Normal for unused days. Create directories with mkdir -p on write.
• Write failures — Retry once. If it fails again, report it. Never lose data — keep content in context and retry.
• Data loss prevention — Always READ before WRITE. Never use edit or sed for journals — always write with full merged content.
• Parallel writes — Coordinate by writing different sections labeled with your agent name, or write separate files and cross-reference.

Scripts

The scripts/ directory contains helper utilities for journal management:

• journal-consolidate.sh — Lists source files for weekly/monthly/yearly consolidation. Pass --journal-dir with the full path to your journals directory. Use this to find which files to read before synthesizing a summary.