# Typmem Retro > Write a retrospective diary entry capturing the story of a work session — what you set out to do, what happened, decisions made, dead ends hit, and unfinished threads — to ~/.typmem/memory/retro/YYYY-MM-DD-.md. Use this whenever wrapping up work, when the user says they are done / stopping for now / "end of session", when a meaningful chunk of work concludes, or when asked to "write a retro", "log what happened", "record today", or "capture this session". Reach for it even if the user never says the word "retro" — any end-of-work wrap-up is a trigger. Do NOT use this to capture durable facts, gotchas, or how-things-work lessons; those are learnings — use typmem-learn for those. - Skill: `thaitype/typmem-retro` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add thaitype/typmem-retro` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thaitype/typmem-retro/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Docs & Writing - Author: thaitype (https://skillmd.com/u/thaitype) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thaitype/typmem-retro --- # typmem-retro Write the diary entry for a chunk of work. A retro is the story of *what happened to you* — useful to tomorrow-you (or your successor) who needs to resume quickly. It is one of several memory layers under `~/.typmem/memory/`; retro is the raw diary lane, not a reviewed or promoted artifact. ## Retro vs learning — read this first This single distinction governs everything: - **Retro = diary.** "What happened to me." Has an `I`, a timeline, decisions, dead ends, loose threads. Useful *soon*, decays fast — three months later most of it is noise because the work moved on. - **Learning = recipe card.** "What I now know about the world." A distilled fact with no story, no timeline, no `I`. True regardless of which day or project produced it. Useful to anyone, indefinitely. Learnings live elsewhere — `typmem-learn` handles them. The test to tell them apart: **"Will this still matter after the work that produced it is finished?"** - No → it is retro material (status, decisions-in-flight, follow-ups). Write it here. - Yes → it is a learning. Do NOT bury it in the diary; flag it (see step 7) and let `typmem-learn` capture it. A retro is *allowed and expected* to be messy, first-person, and time-ordered. That is the point — do not sanitize it into a polished report. ## What goes in a retro Guidance, not a rigid template (the body format is intentionally loose for now — just write the story): - What you set out to do this session - What actually happened (a rough timeline is fine) - Decisions you made, and why - Dead ends — things you tried that did not work, and what you ruled out - Where things stand now: unfinished threads, what's paused, the next step for tomorrow-you ## How to write it 1. Resolve today's date in local time as `YYYY-MM-DD`. 2. Make sure the directory exists: `mkdir -p ~/.typmem/memory/retro` 3. Build a short slug describing what this session was about: lowercase kebab-case, 2–5 words, hyphen-separated, no spaces (e.g. `aca-tailscale-sidecar`, `resh-rhai-parser`). 4. Target file: `~/.typmem/memory/retro/YYYY-MM-DD-.md` (date prefix + slug — retro is the only memory layer that uses a date in the filename). Each session/topic gets its own file. 5. Create the file with this frontmatter, then the diary body: ``` --- author: created: YYYY-MM-DD --- ``` If a file with that exact name already exists (you re-ran on the same topic the same day), do NOT overwrite it — append a `## HH:MM — ` section at the end instead. 6. Write the body as a diary per the guidance above. Keep the diary discipline — rough and honest beats polished. 7. Before finishing, scan what you wrote for any durable facts (recipe cards) that snuck in. For each one, tell the user it belongs in a learning and suggest running `typmem-learn` — but do not write to `learnings/` from this skill yourself. ## File rules - Location: `~/.typmem/memory/retro/` - Filename: `YYYY-MM-DD-.md` (one file per session/topic; slug is a short lowercase kebab-case descriptor) - Frontmatter (MVP): `author`, `created`. No `reviewer` — retro is never reviewed. - Body: free-form diary, no fixed template yet. ## Don't - Don't put durable facts or lessons here — those are learnings (`typmem-learn`). - Don't overwrite an existing retro file — if the name collides, append a new timestamped section instead. - Don't add a `reviewer` field or try to promote a retro. Retro is a side lane that *feeds* learnings; it is not on the promotion ladder (`learnings → precedents → rules`).