Note

Belmont: Note

You are saving learnings and discoveries to NOTES.md so they persist across sessions and context compactions. This skill captures non-obvious information — environment quirks, workarounds, debugging insights, credential locations — that would otherwise be lost.

Storage Locations

• Feature-level: {base}/NOTES.md — learnings specific to the current feature
• Global: .belmont/NOTES.md — cross-cutting learnings (env setup, project-wide patterns)

Where {base} is the feature's base path (e.g., .belmont/features/<slug>/).

Step 1: Determine Target

Decide where to save the note:

1. If the user specifies "global" or the note is about project-wide setup/environment, use .belmont/NOTES.md
2. If the user specifies a feature or you're clearly working in a feature context, use {base}/NOTES.md
3. If unclear, ask the user:

Where should this note be saved?
  [1] Feature: <feature-name> ({base}/NOTES.md)
  [2] Global (.belmont/NOTES.md)

Step 2: Extract Learnings

Gather the content to save:

1. If the user provided specific text, use that
2. If the user says "save what we learned" or similar, extract non-obvious discoveries from the conversation:
   • Environment requirements or quirks
   • Workarounds for bugs or limitations
   • Debugging insights that took effort to discover
   • Credential or config file locations (NEVER save actual secret values)
   • Performance findings
   • Non-obvious patterns or conventions

Do NOT save:

• Routine task completion notes (that's what PROGRESS.md is for)
• Obvious information that's in the docs
• Actual secret values, tokens, passwords, or API keys — only save their locations

Step 3: Confirm with User

Show the user what will be saved:

Saving to: {target file path}

### {Category}
- {learning 1}
- {learning 2}

Save this? [y/n]

Wait for confirmation before writing.

Step 4: Write to NOTES.md

1. If the file doesn't exist: Create it with the header and today's entry:

# Notes

## {YYYY-MM-DD}

### {Category}
- {learning}

2. If the file exists: Read it, then:
   • If today's date heading (## {YYYY-MM-DD}) already exists, add the new category/entries under it
   • If today's date heading doesn't exist, add a new date section after the # Notes header (newest first)

Categories

Use these category headings (or create descriptive ones as needed):

• Environment — setup requirements, tool versions, env vars
• Workaround — bugs, limitations, and their fixes
• Discovery — non-obvious behavior, undocumented features
• Credential — where secrets/configs live (never the values themselves)
• Pattern — codebase conventions, architectural patterns
• Debugging — diagnostic techniques, common error causes
• Performance — optimization findings, bottlenecks

Step 5: Confirm

Report what was saved:

Saved to {target file path}

Rules

1. Never save secret values — only their locations (e.g., "API key is in .env.local under STRIPE_KEY")
2. Only save non-obvious things — this is not a task log
3. Always confirm before writing — show the user what will be saved
4. Newest first — most recent date sections go at the top (after the # Notes header)
5. Freeform categories — use the suggested categories or create descriptive ones that fit