{"content": "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.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "fact 32 \u2014 The mobile app's pull request may be merged once it is ready \u2014 Messages 17282 and 17283 (2026-10-06): the user gave permission to merge the pull request that builds the phone app's full feature set (to-do 3054) once it is ready, without waiting for approval. Ready means: the phone app can use every feature the desktop viewer has (checked against the design's inventory of desktop places and actions, each one marked done); three critique rounds done (rule 58); built on its own branch; the whole suite and boot guard green; and reviewed by two agents with their findings fixed, as pull request 8 was. This is the user's go for rule 61 for that one pull request only.; 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": "rule 49 \u2014 A dialog whose content grows keeps one fixed height, and its content\u2026 \u2014 Message 5361, after asking more than once: a dialog that shows output as it arrives (install, update, logs) opens at its final height and never jumps; only its content scrolls.", "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.", "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; 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.", "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 34s 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": "work 1 is still open \u2014 end it or park it before you stop: journal work end 1 --how \"\", or journal work park 1 \"\"", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "work 1 is still open \u2014 end it or park it before you stop: journal work end 1 --how \"\", or journal work park 1 \"\"", "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 . A helper added to the base class therefore becomes a command on every type \u2014 which is how journal handled and journal 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.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "work 1 is still open \u2014 end it or park it before you stop: journal work end 1 --how \"\", or journal work park 1 \"\"", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"Still waiting\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "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": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "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.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"Still waiting\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"I'm still waiting\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "chat etiquette - a line from the journal is an instruction, not a message\u2026 \u2014 a turn that only handles a journal line needs no words: act on it, or say once in the chat what you wait on, then carry on; what the user needs to know still goes to the chat", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"Still waiting\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "waiting: 1 unread todo 1", "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": "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 --how, or by a commit whose message carries Journal: todos done at column 0, several numbers separated by commas. A row left open after its work landed misleads the next session and auto mode.; rule 55 \u2014 Always dispatch Codex helpers on gpt-6-sol \u2014 The user's word, message 13431: switch the codex agents to GPT-6-Sol and make it their default. ~/.codex/config.toml names it as the default model too.; rule 56 \u2014 Helpers are for work that writes; subagents read, research and design \u2014 The user, message 13464: there must be a clear distinction. A subagent can be dispatched for anything read-only: research, review, design. A helper is for actual work that writes, best in its own worktree when the work is separate. Dieter designing in Claude Design should have been a subagent, not a helper.", "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 \"\" instead of the tag.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"To-do 1 was already closed\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "chat etiquette - a line from the journal is an instruction, not a message\u2026 \u2014 a turn that only handles a journal line needs no words: act on it, or say once in the chat what you wait on, then carry on; what the user needs to know still goes to the chat", "meta": {"from": "journal"}} {"content": "your chat talked about the journal's workings - \"Nothing is waiting\" \u2014 the user sees replies, reactions, pills and reads themselves; say what the work is instead", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}