irp-capture

name	irp-capture
description	Capture, recall, and check durable decision lineage inside any project using IRP (Intent Record Protocol).

IRP Capture — Claude Code Skill

IRP preserves durable human decisions, rationale, and reasoning lineage inside a local project.

When to use this skill

Use capture when a decision crystallises during a Claude session. The reasoning is sharpest at the moment of decision — capture it before moving on.

Use irp why before starting new work. It shows what was already decided so nothing gets relitigated.

Use irp check before proposing something new. It catches conflicts with active decisions.

What IRP captures

• A decided outcome (what)
• The reason it was decided (why)
• When and how it was decided (timestamp, source)

What IRP does NOT capture

• Temporary brainstorming
• Speculative or unresolved thinking
• Task lists or status updates
• Filler summaries
• Duplicate restatements with no new meaning

Think of IRP as a camera, not a notebook. Capture only what should survive session boundaries and matter later.

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Substrate

The canonical IRP state lives in the project root:

.irp/
├── ledger.jsonl     ← append-only source of truth
└── current.json     ← derived active state (last 10 decisions)

These are plain text files. They travel with the repo. No service required.

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Commands

Capture a decision

irp capture "Decision: Use Postgres for the reporting service" \
  --why "Redis rejected — query patterns require joins"

Review active decisions

irp why

Shows the last 10 confirmed decisions with reasoning.

Review a specific decision

irp why --id IRP-2026-04-08-001

Show full project context

irp inherit

Lists all active decisions — use this to understand the current state of the project before making changes.

Check a proposal for conflicts

irp check "Add a SQLite database for reporting"

Returns whether the proposal conflicts with any active decision. Use this before proposing architectural changes.

JSON output

Add --json to any command for machine-readable output:

irp why --json
irp check --json "Add a SQLite database"

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Installation

pip install irp-capture

The irp CLI is immediately available after install. No configuration needed.

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Decision quality guide

A good decision entry answers two questions:

1. What did we choose?
2. What did we reject, and why?

The second question is the valuable one. Anyone can find what you chose. The rejected alternatives are what gets lost.

Threshold: Capture decisions that would be hard to explain six months later. If you cannot write one sentence of why, the decision may not be ready to capture yet.