{"content": "todo 1 next", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "fact 9 \u2014 Every public method on a controller becomes a journal command \u2014 The CLI is generated from the controllers: each public method of Controller, or of a typed controller, turns into journal <noun> <method>. A helper added to the base class therefore becomes a command on every type \u2014 which is how journal <type> handled and journal <type> refuse came to exist, from the CRUD funnel and the refusal funnel. An internal helper on a controller is named with a leading underscore, as _shaped and _status already are, or it ships as a command nobody meant.; law L3 \u2014 Read narrowly - grep for the line, sed a range, head the file; never\u2026 \u2014 Everything a tool returns stays in the context for good and is paid for on every turn after it. Search before you read, read the range you need, and cap output with grep, head or tail. Read a whole file only when you need all of it.; rule 54 \u2014 Settings and feature switches are read at boot and on change, never\u2026 \u2014 The user, message 13349: the application boots, determines every feature and setting once, and re-evaluates only when something changes, such as a setting or a plugin. Never lazy-load settings.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 48 \u2014 The viewer is built from its component library, and pages only\u2026 \u2014 Message 4258. Every visual piece the viewer shows more than once, or that a user would recognise as the same kind of thing (a dialog, a side panel or inspector, a dropdown, a list row, a switch, a button), is one component in web/src/kit, extracted aggressively, and every page composes those components instead of building its own copy. Before writing markup or styles in a page, look for the kit component that already does it and extend it with a prop; a second hand-built version is a bug. The side panel that animated in but not out, while a separate skill panel did both, is the example.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "fact 24 \u2014 An answer followed by tool calls can be missing from Claude's\u2026 \u2014 Seen 2026-09-24 for messages 9391-9404: text blocks opening with [!reply:n] that were followed by tool calls never appeared in the session's jsonl (only thinking and tool_use rows did), so the journal never saw them and the replies were lost. When a turn goes on after answering, send the answer with journal message reply <n> \"<text>\" instead of the tag.; law L5 \u2014 Every subagent dispatch names the agent - a human name, a little\u2026 \u2014 A name is how the user and the chat tell subagents apart and how they are messaged later; an id or a task line is not a name. Start the dispatch's description with the name, a colon, then the task, such as \"Dr. Einstein: profile the slow hooks\" or \"Coco Rams: draw the plan card\". A designer can borrow from famous designers, a researcher from famous scientists, mixed up for fun.; rule 40 \u2014 A feature is named for what it is, never for its machinery \u2014 Messages 599, 600 and 703. A feature is a capability the user would name and would think of switching off. File tracking, a write gate, a phrase bank, a tree diff are services used inside a feature, not features of their own: they live in the feature they serve. Before adding a directory under features/, say what the user would call it; if the answer names a mechanism, it belongs inside something else. Report 16 holds the grouping this implies.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 50 \u2014 Everything the user does is doable in the viewer \u2014 Message 6710 (2026-09-23): the user never uses the CLI, only the UI; everything should be doable from the viewer. The journal commands are for agents; any action meant for the user (making boards, confirming, accepting, hosting, watching an agent) needs its place in the viewer.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "fact 23 \u2014 Every upgrade brings system sequences and their triggers in line\u2026 \u2014 install.py runs ship_sequences after the migrations on each upgrade, so features/sequences/shipped.py is the whole source: change its wording and the next upgrade updates every journal, no migration needed. Shipped rows carry system=True and are read-only for everyone but SYSTEM (controllers/base.py _shipped).; rule 47 \u2014 The journal sets itself up once, when the server starts, never per\u2026 \u2014 Messages 2220 and 2224. Discovering features and their handlers, seating the feature rows and the rename sweep happen once, at server boot, and again only when a feature is switched on or off, a plugin changes or an environment is added: features.load keeps a set-up generation per journal (SEATED) and redoes the work only when that generation moves. A command, a request or a hook uses what is already there; nothing in their path may rediscover handlers or rescan folders. A cost that repeats per call is a bug to fix, not a budget to raise.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "Code Commandments \u2014 the edit you just made to `demo.py` breaks a rule. Fix it n\u2026 \u2014 Code Commandments \u2014 the edit you just made to `demo.py` breaks a rule. Fix it now, at its SOURCE, while the code is still in front of you: \u00b7 \u2022 python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:70; python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:72; python-raw-decoded-return at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:88 \u00b7 LOAD the skill `commandments-python-value-objects` before fixing \u2014 load it even if you believe you already have. \u00b7 Run `commandments info <sin>` if a rule is not one you recognise. This check reads a file at a time, so it is not the whole picture \u2014 `judge` still is.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "fact 13 \u2014 This live session runs the installed copy in .journal/journal.pyz \u2014 The running journal (server, hooks, CLI) runs from .journal/journal.pyz with its viewer and skills in .journal/src, never from the repo. A change in the repo reaches it only through python3 src/journal.py --root .journal upgrade, which packs the zip again. A commit alone changes nothing that is running.; rule 44 \u2014 Release a new version after every significant change \u2014 The user, message 13219 (2026-10-01): 'Don't forget to release new versions every time you do something significant.' Bump VERSION, add a CHANGELOG entry, push main and the tag. Replaces message 5929's release-on-request.; rule 46 \u2014 Only commit and push once the whole journal is proven to boot \u2014 Messages 2178 and 2179. A release that has not been started for real can crash every project that installs it, as 2.78.3 did for Codex and 2.84.0 did to project records. Before every commit and push: the full suite passes, including tests/test_it_boots.py, which installs a packed copy into a fresh project, launches Claude and Codex from it, writes a project record, upgrades again and checks the record survives. When a change touches launching, installing or upgrading, also start a real journal in a scratch project and close it properly afterwards, leaving no process behind.; rule 51 \u2014 Every finished feature is committed, pushed and released with a new\u2026 \u2014 Message 9207 (2026-09-24): when a new feature is ready, commit, push and publish a new tag. This is the user's standing word for releasing, so rule 44's only-when-the-user-says is met by it for finished features; fixes in between wait for the next feature or a patch the user asks for.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "the log tag does this in one step \u2014 [!log:N] makes the turn itself the log entry; it runs only when it opens the last text of your turn", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 41 \u2014 Keep moving, run the whole suite before every commit, never wait \u2014 The full suite runs in about seven seconds: .venv/bin/python -m pytest -q --timeout=300 -n auto. Run it before every commit instead of picking tests by name. Group rows that sit in the same code into one sitting: write them all, test once, commit once. And never wait, not for a subagent, a build, or an answer you can carry on without. Dispatch it and keep working. If you truly are waiting on something, say so in the work log.; rule 42 \u2014 Every user-facing text passes the formatters before it leaves the\u2026 \u2014 Not only a brief. A title, an abstract, an outcome and every section body are read by a person, so each goes through the same formatters on its way to the viewer \u2014 chat turns, activity items, to-do rows, inspector pages, docs alike. One field formatted out of five is not a rule, it is an accident, and it is how a raw tag ended up in the activity list after the tags feature had been stripping them for weeks. When a new field carries words a person reads, it joins the list in the same place.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "Code Commandments \u2014 `demo.py`, changed since the last check, breaks a rule. Fix\u2026 \u2014 Code Commandments \u2014 `demo.py`, changed since the last check, breaks a rule. Fix it now, at its SOURCE, while the code is still in front of you: \u00b7 \u2022 python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:83; python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:85; python-raw-decoded-return at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:105 \u00b7 LOAD the skill `commandments-python-value-objects` before fixing \u2014 load it even if you believe you already have. \u00b7 Run `commandments info <sin>` if a rule is not one you recognise. This check reads a file at a time, so it is not the whole picture \u2014 `judge` still is.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "work 1 in hand \u2014 Turn a recording into the demo's data \u2014 if this is not what you are doing, end it or park it and start the work you are in", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "your command ran 32s in the foreground and was moved to the background \u2014 carry on with other work; you are told when it ends. Start a command you expect to take long in the background yourself", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "Code Commandments \u2014 the files changed since the last check (`scrub.py`, `demo.p\u2026 \u2014 Code Commandments \u2014 the files changed since the last check (`scrub.py`, `demo.py`) breaks a rule. Fix it now, at its SOURCE, while the code is still in front of you: \u00b7 \u2022 python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:84; python-dict-bag at /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-sabine-framewell/src/features/session_recording/demo.py:86 \u00b7 LOAD the skill `commandments-python-value-objects` before fixing \u2014 load it even if you believe you already have. \u00b7 Run `commandments info <sin>` if a rule is not one you recognise. This check reads a file at a time, so it is not the whole picture \u2014 `judge` still is.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "your command ran 31s in the foreground and was moved to the background \u2014 carry on with other work; you are told when it ends. Start a command you expect to take long in the background yourself", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "your command ran 33s in the foreground and was moved to the background \u2014 carry on with other work; you are told when it ends. Start a command you expect to take long in the background yourself", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 36 \u2014 Clean, DRY, idiomatic before it is committed, never after it is\u2026 \u2014 The user should never be the one who finds duplication, dead code, a clumsy name or a pattern the codebase does not use. Read the diff before every commit as a reviewer would, and fix what is not clean then, not in a follow-up after a complaint.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "Code Commandments \u2014 before you commit \u2014 you've changed 4 judged files since the\u2026 \u2014 Code Commandments \u2014 before you commit: you've changed 4 judged files since the last commit. Consider running `commandments judge --changes` to confirm they conform, and fix any sin at its SOURCE (don't launder a finding with a default/cast/null-check). This is a one-time nudge for this batch \u2014 if you've already judged, or these changes aren't worth a scan, just say so and carry on.; rule 37 \u2014 Close every to-do explicitly with todo done or a Journal commit\u2026 \u2014 Ending work does not close its row. A to-do is closed by journal todo done <n> --how, or by a commit whose message carries Journal: todos done <n> at column 0, several numbers separated by commas. A row left open after its work landed misleads the next session and auto mode.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 35 \u2014 Write clean code - one funnel per kind of operation, never the same\u2026 \u2014 Every kind of operation has one funnel: one method that creates, one that saves, one that refuses, one that formats. A second method that does the same thing under another name splits the behaviour, and the two drift apart. Before writing a method, search for the one that already does it and extend that. scripts/checks/funnels.py finds bodies written twice.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "Code Commandments found 12 sins across 5 skills. \u2014 journal check show 26 says why; fix it, then journal check run 26", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"To-do 1 is closed\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}