Jotbook Stage

Stage a jot

You just gave (or were asked about) an explainer the user wants to revisit later. Write a lightweight pointer file (a "jot") so the topic can be picked up during a future review pass. Do not write the full entry — that's jotbook-ink's job.

When to auto-invoke

Auto-invoke this skill at the end of any turn that delivered a substantive multi-paragraph explanation of a domain concept — a system, mechanism, piece of code, or design rationale that the user might plausibly want to revisit as a long-form note later. Don't ask first. Just stage and report.

Do NOT auto-invoke for:

• Short answers, status updates, error messages
• Code edits with minimal narration
• Routine tool use or clarifications
• Output from any jotbook skill (curation summaries, "the jot backlog is empty", (jotted: X), etc.)
• Trivial Q&A ("what's the syntax for X")
• Anything you wouldn't expect future-you to benefit from a long-form entry on

When in doubt, skip — the user can always invoke /jot [subject] explicitly.

Resolve the jots directory

Read .claude/jotbook.local.md if present. From its frontmatter, extract:

• jots_dir — default docs/jotbook/_jots/ if missing

If the jots directory does not exist, create it. Before running mkdir, briefly note to the user what you're doing and why — something like "Creating <jots_dir> to hold staged jots (first time staging in this project, or the directory was renamed in settings)." This avoids a context-free permission prompt that could confuse a user who set up jotbook days earlier and forgot.

What to write

A single Markdown file at:

<jots_dir>/YYYY-MM-DD-short-kebab-slug.md

• YYYY-MM-DD = today's date (use the currentDate from context if available, otherwise the system date).
• short-kebab-slug = 2–5 words capturing the concept, lowercased, hyphenated.

File contents:

---
staged: YYYY-MM-DD
---
One-line description of what was explained — past tense, plain prose.

Files: path/to/file_one.ext, path/to/file_two.ext

The Files: line is optional. Include it only when the explainer leaned heavily on specific source files (e.g., "how does this manager work" → yes; "what does eventual consistency mean in general" → no).

Hard limits

• One line of description. Not two. Not a paragraph. If you feel the urge to write more, you're trying to do jotbook-ink's or jotbook-pencil's job — stop.
• No background, no rationale, no code excerpts. A jot is a pointer. The full explanation lives in chat history or will be reconstructed at ink (or pencil) time.
• No headings beyond the frontmatter.

The point of a tiny jot is that some won't survive review, and you should be able to drop one without regret.

Procedure

1. Identify the subject:
   • If the user passed an argument, use that as the subject phrase.
   • Otherwise (auto-invocation or no-arg /jot), infer from the most recent explainer in the conversation. If there isn't a clear recent explainer, ask the user what they want jotted rather than guessing.
2. Derive the slug (kebab-case, ≤ 5 words).
3. Check the jots directory for an existing jot with a similar slug or covering the same concept. If one exists, ask the user whether to append to it (add a line to the description), supersede it (replace with today's framing), or create a new one alongside.
4. Write the file using the absolute path.
5. Report back in one short line: the slug and a brief confirmation. Don't lecture about the workflow. For auto-invocations, keep it especially terse — something like Jotted: <slug> is plenty.

What NOT to do

• Don't propose to ink or pencil the jot into a full entry immediately. That's a separate explicit step.
• Don't add tags, status fields, priority, or other metadata beyond staged:.
• Don't ask the user to "review" the staged jot — it's already supposed to be lightweight enough that review is unnecessary.
• Don't stage trivial Q&A ("what's the syntax for X"). If you wouldn't expect future-you to benefit from a long-form entry on it, don't stage it.