{"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": "rule 57 \u2014 Never merge the overnight refactor into main before its pull request\u2026 \u2014 Messages 15005, 15006, 15109, 15110 (2026-10-04): all refactor work goes on branch overnight-refactor and reaches the user as one pull request, which they read in the morning; nothing of it is merged into main until they say so. Hotfixes the user explicitly asks for go to main at once and are merged into the branch.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 61 \u2014 Features wait as pull requests until approved; only hotfixes merge\u2026 \u2014 Message 17118 (2026-10-06), after the overnight refactor merged as 2.252.0: start new work in a new branch, do not merge, write the pull request. Every pull request or new feature is parked until the user approves it. Hotfixes can be merged into main immediately (by a dispatched agent in a worktree of main, rule 60).; rule 64 \u2014 A finished feature is merged into main without waiting for approval \u2014 The user, message 17815 (2026-10-07): 'make sure that no pull requests are lingering on the repository. You may merge them into main... You are allowed to merge everything into main once the feature is completed.' This replaces rule 61's wait for approval: a feature still goes on its own branch, and once it is complete, tested and its whole suite passes, it is merged into main and released, and no pull request is left open.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 38 \u2014 Never change the git branch until the user says so, by name \u2014 The work happens on the branch the user named. That was main until message 5929 and question 80 (2026-09-23), which moved the sins work to the branch sins. Do not create, switch to or merge any other branch unless the user names it in their own words.; 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": "that Bash call returned 26,325 characters, the largest this session \u2014 It stays in the context for good. If you were looking for one thing in it, the next read can be narrower: grep for the line, sed a range, head the file.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "main moved since your worktree was cut \u2014 It gained 4 commits (74c4cb42e Version 2.269.1; 87dcc496c The mascot imports the blink it uses; 358211c47 A plan under review says on its card and in its inspector how many reviewers are still reviewing; e8db5a1b9 A plugin service whose when-check exits 126 or 127, or cannot run or answer, is listed as failing with the command's own words, and the watcher tells it once, never as not needed). Rebase onto main in /Users/jessegall/projects/agent-journal/.claude/worktrees/main-signor-bernini before you report.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "The journal is updating, so you are paused: start no new command and wait; you will be told when to continue.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "The journal has updated and resumed you now: carry on with exactly what you were doing; your open work stays open and is not to be parked.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "you ran the same check 3 times in a row - lsof -p 69276 -a -d cwd -Fn | tail\u2026 \u2014 if you are waiting for something to change, say journal work await \"<what you wait for>\" and end your turn: you are asked to look again every five minutes, and a background command tells you itself when it ends. Keep checking only if each look moves the work on.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "the await tag does this in one step \u2014 [!await] makes the rest of the turn what you wait for; [!await on=(\"<id>\", \"helper:<n>\")] waits on those; 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.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 60 \u2014 A hotfix is done by a dispatched agent in a worktree of main \u2014 Message 16836 (2026-10-06): the orchestrator cut a worktree under .claude/worktrees for a Codex hotfix, its session moved to a new environment and the user's messages stopped reaching it. The user: when working on a branch and a hotfix comes in, create a worktree of main and dispatch an agent to do that work. The orchestrator stays on its branch and in its environment, and never cds into another checkout.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "law L7 \u2014 Write the least code that solves the whole problem - find what\u2026 \u2014 Before writing, search the code for what already does the job or most of it, and extend that instead of adding a second way. Every read or write of one kind of thing (a file, a record, a setting, a provider) goes through the one funnel that owns it, which is where caching and checks live. A fix lands where the fault is born, not where it shows. When you finish, say in a line what you skipped or did not check.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "the hook hit an error \u2014 journal: the hook hit an error and kept going; the last of it is below and the whole of it is in .journal/runtime/engine.log. Fix it, then say so. the hook got no answer from the server 17 times (codes 000, machine load 258.29 on 10 cores)", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "the hook hit an error \u2014 journal: the hook hit an error and kept going; the last of it is below and the whole of it is in .journal/runtime/engine.log. Fix it, then say so. the hook got no answer from the server 6 times (codes 000, machine load 270.53 on 10 cores)", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "check 31 failed - subprocess.TimeoutExpired - Command '['gh', 'api', 'user'\u2026 \u2014 journal check show 31 says why; fix it, then journal check run 31", "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": "rule 62 \u2014 The voice profile shapes only the agent's chat speech, never code or\u2026 \u2014 The user, message 17620 (2026-10-07): the profile (butler, homie, coach, colleague) must not leak into the code the agent writes or into user-facing text of any application it works on: names, labels, comments, commit messages, docs and briefs written into a project use plain words (helper, subagent). Speaking in the chat in the profile's voice is fine.", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "rule 43 \u2014 A request or hook over its budget is fixed before the next release \u2014 Comment 1151 on this rule. When the faults feature reports a request, a hook or a command slower than its budget, file it as a to-do at once. It does not jump ahead of the work in hand, but no version is published while one is still open: profile it, fix it, and verify the new time before the release goes out. The budget is 50ms, because everything runs locally against files.", "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": "check 2 failed - web/src/board/lanePages.js -33 names an endpoint outside\u2026 \u2014 journal check show 2 says why; fix it, then journal check run 2", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}
{"content": "the hook hit an error \u2014 journal: the hook hit an error and kept going; the last of it is below and the whole of it is in .journal/runtime/engine.log. Fix it, then say so. the hook got no answer from the server 21 times (codes 000, machine load 253.55 on 10 cores)", "meta": {"from": "journal"}}