# Logging Daily Progress > Maintains a rolling daily progress log (`progress-daily.md`) that captures Impact, Learnings, and Commits for each day of engineering work, sourced from git history. Author identity and log path are configurable per repo. TRIGGER when: user says "log today", "log my day", "any updates?", "what did I ship?", "update my progress log", "add today to the hype doc", "recap this week from git", "catch me up on what I shipped", or "backfill since ". Also trigger when the user mentions Impact/Learnings/Commits journaling, the Career Hype Doc practice, or wants daily wins recorded while context is fresh rather than reconstructed later from calendar archaeology. DO NOT USE when: the user wants a one-off git log query (use `git log` directly) or a release-notes-style changelog (different audience, different format). - Skill: `bsene/logging-daily-progress` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add bsene/logging-daily-progress` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/bsene/logging-daily-progress/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Productivity - Author: bsene (https://skillmd.com/u/bsene) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/bsene/logging-daily-progress --- # Logging Daily Progress ## What a good entry looks like Every day is a third-level heading followed by three sections. Nothing else. ``` ## YYYY-MM-DD ### Impact - One bullet per outcome. Lead with the verb. Name the artifact or the number. ### Learnings - One bullet per insight. The shape is "X, because Y" — the lesson plus why it matters. ### Commits - `` : --- ``` Entries are separated by `---`. Newest is at the bottom so the file reads chronologically. ## Workflow When invoked, work through these steps in order. Do not skip the confirmation step. ### 1. Locate the log file Default path: `progress-daily.md` at repo root, or `ai/resources/progress-daily.md` if that exists (some repos keep career/AI artifacts under `ai/resources/`). If neither exists, ask the user where it should live before creating one. ### 2. Identify the author Run `git config user.name` and `git config user.email` to get the current author. If the repo is shared with teammates, confirm this is the identity to track — some people commit under multiple names/emails across missions. ### 3. Collect commits for the target day(s) Use the bundled helper: ```bash bash collect_commits.sh [author-regex] ``` If no date is given, default to today. If the user asks for a range ("this week", "since Monday"), loop the script over each day — one entry per day, never one mega-entry for the range. The script prints one line per commit in the form ` : `, ready to drop into the Commits section. ### 4. Check for existing entries before appending Read the last ~50 lines of the log to see what's already there. If an entry for the target date already exists, do not blindly overwrite — ask whether to replace, merge, or add to the existing entry. Duplicate headings silently are worse than asking. ### 5. Draft Impact and Learnings (this is the hard part) Commits alone are not impact. The user did things that commits only hint at — shipped a fix, unblocked a teammate, learned a pattern. Derive Impact and Learnings by reading commit subjects _and_ looking at the diff when the subject is cryptic. Guidelines for good bullets: - **Impact bullets name outcomes, not activities.** "Fixed CI: gitignore pattern for scripts/smoke was incorrect, unblocking smoke test runs" is impact. "Worked on CI" is activity. If you can't say what changed for someone else, it's probably not impact. - **Learnings are specific and transferable.** "gitignore glob scope: `scripts/smoke/` (directory only) vs `scripts/smoke` (file or dir)" is a learning. "Learned about gitignore" is not. - **If commits are all chores with no clear outcome, say so.** A day of tooling/refactor is still worth logging — label it honestly ("Largest single-day agentic investment: expanded skill library by 48 files") rather than inventing impact. - **Draft, then show the user before writing.** The user knows what the day actually produced; you only see what git recorded. Always propose the Impact/Learnings bullets and wait for edits before appending to the file. ### 6. Append, don't prepend New entries go at the bottom of the file. The separator `---` sits on its own line between entries. Preserve whatever header/preamble the file already has at the top. ## Running cadence variants The skill supports three cadences. Pick based on how the user phrases the request. - **"Log today"** → one entry for today, today's commits only. - **"Catch me up on this week"** / **"any updates?"** → one entry per day for each day that has commits, oldest first. Skip days with zero commits rather than writing empty entries. - **"Backfill since "** → same as week catch-up but bounded by the given date. ## When to push back - If the user asks to log a day with zero commits and no clear reason, ask what they actually did that day before fabricating bullets. An honest "light day" entry is better than inventing impact. - If the Impact bullets you're drafting read like marketing copy ("delivered world-class solution"), stop and rewrite in plain language. The log is for the user's own review, not for performance theater. - If the user asks to edit old entries to sound better, that's their call, but note that the value of the practice comes from fresh-context honesty — retroactive polishing erodes the signal. ## Bundled resources - `collect_commits.sh` — git log wrapper that returns commits for a given day in the exact Commits-section format. Call this instead of hand-rolling `git log` flags every time. - `day-entry.md` — the canonical empty template for a single day's entry. Copy and fill. ## Files to read when relevant - `day-entry.md` — read when drafting a fresh entry from scratch. - The existing `progress-daily.md` — always read the last entry before appending, to match tone and avoid duplicates. --- ## Benchmark Scenario: `.benchmarks/scenarios/logging-daily-progress-001-week-recap.md` · Run: 2026-08-31 · Log: `.benchmarks/runs/2026-08-31/logging-daily-progress-001-week-recap.json` | Model | Without | With | Delta | | ----------------- | ------- | ---- | ----- | | claude-opus-4-8 | 0% | 100% | +100% | | claude-sonnet-4-6 | 17% | 83% | +66% | | claude-haiku-4-5 | 33% | 100% | +67% | > **PASS (run 2026-08-31)**. Standout of the cycle: without-skill baselines collapse on the week recap (17–33%); with-skill all models reach 83–100%. Gate per `.agents/skills/skill-optimizer/rules/release-gates.md`.