Retro

Retro

I'll run a structured weekly retrospective: what shipped, what broke, what patterns to carry forward, and concrete changes for next week. Inspired by gstack's retro skill.

Token Optimization

Expected range: 400–900 tokens (git log + interview), 50 tokens (no activity in window)

Patterns used: Bash for git history, progressive disclosure (questions first, synthesis after), early exit (no commits in window)

Early exit: If there are no commits in the last 7 days, report "No activity this week" and stop.

Step 1 — Gather the Week's Data

# Commits from the last 7 days
git log --oneline --since="7 days ago" --no-merges 2>/dev/null

# Files most changed this week
git diff --stat HEAD~20 HEAD 2>/dev/null | sort -rn | head -10

# Any TODOs or FIXMEs added this week
git diff --since="7 days ago" -S "TODO\|FIXME" --name-only 2>/dev/null | head -10

# Check session files for activity log
ls -lt .claude/sessions/*.json 2>/dev/null | head -5

If no commits found, report "Nothing to retro — no commits this week." and stop.

Step 2 — Four Retro Questions

Ask each question in order. Keep answers brief — one to three sentences each.

What shipped? List the things you completed and merged. Use the git log as a prompt if needed.

What broke or slowed you down? What took longer than expected? What broke unexpectedly? What required repeated attempts?

What pattern do you want to carry into next week? Something that worked well — a workflow, a tool, an approach — that you want to do more of.

What is the one change you will make next week? One concrete, specific change. Not "be more careful" — something you can act on Monday morning.

Step 3 — Produce the Retro Entry

Write a dated entry to .claude/retros/YYYY-MM-DD.md:

# Retro — YYYY-MM-DD

## Shipped
- <item>
- <item>

## Broke / Slowed Down
- <item>

## Pattern to Carry Forward
<one sentence>

## One Change for Next Week
<one concrete action>

## Commit Activity
<count> commits across <N> files
Most active: <top 3 files>

mkdir -p .claude/retros
# Write the entry

Step 4 — Surface Action Items

Extract any concrete next-week commitments and print them as a checklist:

Next week:
  [ ] <action from Q4>
  [ ] <any fix mentioned in Q2 that is still open>

Step 5 — Update Learnings (if /learn is available)

If any pattern or anti-pattern surfaced that should persist beyond this week, suggest running /learn add "<pattern>" to record it.

Edge Cases

• First retro: No prior retros to compare against; just run it fresh
• Sparse week: A short retro is still useful — ship it even with one item per section
• Multiple engineers: Ask each person's answers separately before synthesizing; credit them by name in the entry
• Old retros: Running /retro --list shows all past entries; /retro --show 2026-04-20 opens a specific one