Write Session Chronicle

Write Session Chronicle

A chronicle is the honest account of what happened. It is not a victory lap. It should help a future agent resume work without trusting stale claims.

1. Locate the record

Use the project's existing convention if present. Otherwise create:

_meta/chronicles/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD-short-slug.md

If no _meta/ exists, use:

docs/chronicles/YYYY-MM-DD-short-slug.md

If the work had a commission, link it.

2. Reconstruct reality

Inspect:

• Git status and diff
• Commands/tests/checks run
• Files created, edited, moved, or deleted
• User corrections and changes in direction
• Known failures or skipped checks
• Open questions and deferred tasks

Do not rely on memory when the filesystem can answer.

3. Write the chronicle

Include:

• Metadata: date, status, related commission or task
• Trigger: what started the work
• Attempted: what the session tried to do
• Changed: concrete file/path changes
• Checked: commands or review steps that actually ran
• Failed: wrong turns, false premises, broken checks
• Deferred: exact remaining work and where it is tracked
• Disagreements: where the agent or user corrected direction
• Current truth: what future work should believe

4. Be specific

Good:

• "Renamed skills/foo to skills/bar and updated frontmatter."
• "python3 -m json.tool passed on plugin metadata."
• "Full validator did not run because PyYAML was unavailable."

Bad:

• "Cleaned things up."
• "Everything works."
• "Some tests were run."

5. Preserve course corrections

If the session changed direction, record the before/after. A wrong turn that got corrected is valuable context.

6. Finish with next moves

End with the highest-signal next actions:

• What to do next
• What not to repeat
• Which files are the source of truth
• Which checks need to be rerun later