Retrospective
Session retrospective for continual learning. Reviews conversation, extracts learnings, updates skills.
When to Use
Run at end of coding sessions to capture learnings before context is lost. Invoke via /retrospective or when user says "let's do a retro".
Process
1. Session Analysis
Review the entire conversation and identify:
Successes
- •What worked well
- •Effective approaches discovered
- •Useful patterns or techniques
- •Tools/commands that solved problems
Failures
- •What didn't work
- •Dead ends encountered
- •Errors and their root causes
- •Approaches to avoid
Discoveries
- •New insights about the codebase
- •Unexpected behaviors
- •Configuration quirks
- •Edge cases found
2. Skill Identification
Determine which skills were used or could benefit:
- •Check
~/.claude/skills/for personal skills - •Check
.claude/skills/for project skills - •Identify if new skill should be created
3. Learning Extraction
For each relevant skill, extract:
markdown
## Learnings from [DATE] ### What Worked - [specific technique or approach] ### What Failed - [approach] — [why it failed] ### Configuration Notes - [any settings or params that matter]
4. Skill Update
Update skill files with extracted learnings:
- •Add to existing
## Learningsor## Known Issuessections - •Create sections if they don't exist
- •Keep entries dated and concise
- •Preserve existing content
5. Summary Output
Report to user:
- •Skills updated (with paths)
- •Key learnings captured
- •Suggested new skills (if patterns emerged)
Output Format
code
## Session Retrospective ### Skills Updated - `~/.claude/skills/[name]/skill.md` — added [X] learnings ### Key Takeaways 1. [Most important learning] 2. [Second learning] ### Failures Documented - [Failure 1]: [brief reason] ### Suggested Actions - [ ] Create new skill for [pattern] - [ ] Update CLAUDE.md with [insight]
Guidelines
- •Be specific: "Use
--no-cacheflag" not "caching can cause issues" - •Include context: When/why something works or fails
- •Date entries: Learnings should have dates for tracking
- •Don't over-document: Only capture genuinely useful insights
- •Failures are valuable: Non-deterministic LLM behavior means documenting anti-patterns prevents repeating mistakes
Example Skill Update
Adding to ~/.claude/skills/pdf-generation/skill.md:
markdown
## Known Issues ### 2025-01-01 - Eisvogel template fails with emoji in headers — escape or remove - Russian text needs `babel-lang: russian` in YAML frontmatter ## What Works ### 2025-01-01 - `--pdf-engine=xelatex` required for non-Latin scripts - Pre-flight check: `pandoc --version` to verify filters installed
Integration
Can be combined with:
- •Git commit hooks (auto-retro before commit)
- •CLAUDE.md instructions (remind to run retro)
- •CI/CD (capture learnings from failed builds)
Tools
- •Read: Access skill files and conversation history
- •Edit: Update existing skills
- •Write: Create new skill files if needed
- •Glob: Find skill directories