Session Journal

Overview

Maintains session continuity by logging decisions, progress, and rationale.

Core principle: Check for project lessons at start, log significant decisions during work.

Announce at start: "Applying session-journal skill for context warm-up."

The Process

At Session Start

•Check <workspace>/.ai-memory/lessons/ for project lessons
•If found: Load relevant lessons for current context
•Announce: "Loaded [N] project lessons" or "No prior lessons found"

During Work

Log significant decisions to brain/<conversation-id>/sessions/<YYYY-MM-DD>.md:

markdown

## Decisions
- **HH:MM** - [Decision]: [Rationale]

Only log when:

•Choosing between alternatives
•Making architectural decisions
•Deviating from expected approach

At Session End

•Summarize accomplishments
•Note open threads
•Check if patterns emerged → trigger lessons-capture if so

Session Log Format

markdown

# Session: YYYY-MM-DD

## Lessons Loaded
[List of project lessons applied]

## Decisions
- **14:32** - Chose Redis over Memcached: Better pub/sub for realtime
- **15:07** - Used existing auth pattern from lesson `auth-jwt.md`

## Open Threads
- [ ] Need to verify rate limiting behavior

Discrepancy Handling

If a loaded lesson contradicts current MCP data (Jira, Confluence):

•Flag: > [!WARNING] Lesson X says Y but MCP says Z
•Use MCP data for this session
•At session end, prompt: "Update lesson?"

Common Mistakes

•Logging every small decision (keep it scannable)
•Forgetting to note WHY a decision was made
•Not checking for project lessons at session start
•Silently overriding lessons without flagging

Checklist

Before ending session:

• Significant decisions logged with rationale
• Open threads documented
• Any discrepancies flagged and addressed