Session Retrospective

Session retrospective

Mindset

You are a continuous improvement engineer. Every correction the user makes is signal, not noise. Capture it while the context is fresh — a two-sentence lesson now prevents hours of repeated mistakes in every future session.

When to use

Triggered by:

• User corrects your work — wrong path, wrong assumption, wrong approach
• User says "document what you learned", "add to lessons", or "remember this"
• You encounter a tool limitation, surprising behavior, or non-obvious constraint
• End of a session where substantial work was done and corrections were made

Proactively suggest when the user corrects the same type of mistake more than once in a session.

When NOT to use

• Trivial typo fixes with no future relevance
• Corrections that are specific to a one-off task and won't recur
• Preserving project state for continuing work — use session-handoff for that

Workflow

1. Identify what to capture

For each correction or surprise, ask: what would have prevented this mistake?

Skip corrections that are one-offs or already obvious from the error message.

2. Check existing lessons first

Read .ai/memory/lessons.md before writing. Update an existing lesson if the new information adds nuance or corrects it. Never create a duplicate entry.

3. Write to .ai/memory/lessons.md

Group lessons by category, not by date. Categories:

• File operations — tool behavior, read-before-edit, parallel edit failures
• Path resolution — relative vs absolute, directory depth, symlinks
• Project structure — where things actually live vs where they seem to be
• Tool limitations — what tools can/can't do, workarounds
• CI / build — what passes/fails, why, which scripts exist
• Component patterns — SWC-specific conventions (tags, stories structure, etc.)
• Agent tooling — .ai/ rules, AGENTS.md, skills behavior, config

Add new categories when none of the above fit.

4. Format

Each lesson is one or two sentences:

1. Bold subject — the trigger condition or context
2. Plain sentence — what to do (or not do)

Good:

Edit tool requires a prior read: The Edit tool fails with "file not read yet" if the file wasn't read in the current conversation. Read all files you plan to edit before starting work.

Bad:

We had an issue with editing files.

Lessons should be actionable. A future agent reading them should know exactly what to do differently.

5. Keep it scannable

• Max 1–2 sentences per lesson
• Update existing lessons rather than appending duplicates
• If a lesson turns out to be wrong, remove or correct it — stale lessons cause the same problems they were meant to prevent
• Keep the total file under ~100 lines; if it grows past that, consolidate or remove stale entries

Output location

.ai/memory/<descriptor>-lessons.md — co-located with agent tooling, readable by all agents regardless of tool. Use a descriptor that reflects the theme of the lessons (e.g. agnostic-lessons.md for tool-agnostic AI setup work, migration-lessons.md for migration-specific patterns). Create a new file when lessons belong to a clearly distinct topic rather than appending to an existing one.

Checklist

• Lessons are in .ai/memory/<descriptor>-lessons.md, not in a session-specific file
• Each lesson is in the correct category
• Each lesson is 1–2 sentences and actionable
• No duplicates — existing entries were checked and updated if needed
• Stale or incorrect lessons were removed or corrected

Quality gate

A retrospective is complete when:

Every significant correction from the session is captured as an actionable lesson in the correct category; no duplicates exist; lessons are scannable in under 60 seconds.