Notes

When to Use

User needs to capture any type of notes: meetings, brainstorms, decisions, daily journals, or project logs. Agent handles formatting, action item extraction, deadline tracking, and retrieval.

Architecture

Notes live in ~/notes/. See memory-template.md for setup.

~/notes/
├── index.md           # Search index with tags
├── meetings/          # Meeting notes by date
├── decisions/         # Decision log
├── projects/          # Project-specific notes
├── journal/           # Daily notes
└── actions.md         # Active action items tracker

Quick Reference

Core Rules

1. Always Use Structured Format

Every note type has a specific format. See formats.md for templates.

2. Extract Action Items Aggressively

If someone says "I'll do X" or "we need to Y" — that's an action item.

Every action item MUST have:

• Owner — Who is responsible (@name)
• Task — Specific, actionable description
• Deadline — Explicit date (not "soon" or "ASAP")

If missing deadline, suggest one:

⚠️ No deadline set for: "Review the proposal"
   Suggested: 2026-02-21 (2 days from now)
   Confirm or specify: ___

3. One Response, Complete Output

Never split notes into multiple messages. Always include:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📝 [NOTE TYPE]: [Title] — [YYYY-MM-DD]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Formatted content per type]

⚡ ACTION ITEMS ([X] total)
1. [ ] @Owner: Task — Due: YYYY-MM-DD
2. [ ] @Owner: Task — Due: YYYY-MM-DD

📎 Saved: notes/[folder]/YYYY-MM-DD_[topic].md
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4. Filename Convention

Always: YYYY-MM-DD_topic-slug.md (date first, then topic)

Examples:

• ✅ 2026-02-19_product-review (correct: date first)
• ❌ product-review-notes (wrong: no date)
• ❌ notes-2026-02-19 (wrong: date not first)

5. Tag Everything for Retrieval

Every note gets tags in the header:

---
date: 2026-02-19
type: meeting
tags: [product, roadmap, q1-planning]
attendees: [alice, bob, carol]
---

Update ~/notes/index.md with each new note.

6. Track Actions Centrally

Maintain ~/notes/actions.md as single source of truth. See tracking.md for system.

7. Link Related Notes

When a note references previous discussions:

• Never say "as discussed" without link
• Format: See [[2026-02-15_kickoff]] for context
• Search existing notes before creating duplicates

8. Decision Documentation

Decisions get special treatment:

## [DECISION] Title — YYYY-MM-DD

**Context:** Why this decision was needed
**Options Considered:**
1. Option A — pros/cons
2. Option B — pros/cons
**Decision:** What was chosen
**Rationale:** Why this option
**Owner:** Who made it
**Effective:** When it takes effect
**Reverses:** [[previous-decision]] (if applicable)

9. Meeting Effectiveness Score

End every meeting note with:

📊 Meeting Effectiveness: [X/10]
   □ Clear agenda beforehand
   □ Started/ended on time  
   □ Decisions were made
   □ Actions have owners + deadlines
   □ Could NOT have been an email

10. Quick Capture Mode

For rapid input, accept minimal format:

User: "Note: call with Sarah, she wants the report by Friday, I'll send draft tomorrow"

Agent extracts:

• Meeting note: Call with Sarah
• Action: Send draft report (@me, due: tomorrow)
• Action: Final report (Sarah expects by Friday)

Common Traps

• Vague deadlines → "ASAP", "soon", "next week" are not deadlines. Force explicit dates.
• Missing owners → "We should do X" needs "@who will do X"
• Orphaned actions → Actions not tracked centrally get forgotten. Always sync.
• Duplicate notes → Search before creating. Link don't duplicate.
• No retrieval tags → A note without tags is a note you'll never find.

Related Skills

Install with clawhub install <slug> if user confirms:

• meetings — meeting facilitation and agendas
• todo — task management system
• documentation — technical docs
• journal — daily journaling practice
• decisions — decision frameworks

Feedback

• If useful: clawhub star notes
• Stay updated: clawhub sync