journal

A Claude Code skill that turns a day of git activity into a rich narrative work journal — plus a rolling project summary that stays readable over time.

Good for:

• End-of-day review — what actually happened today, not just a commit list.
• Team sync / standup — someone who missed the day can read one page and know where things stand.
• Changelog source material — user-facing bullets drafted as a byproduct.

What it produces

Each run writes two files (default location docs/journal/):

• <YYYY-MM-DD>.md — the day's entry: narrative overview, contributors, 3–5 "efforts" grouped by theme (not by commit), decisions, problems, risks, in-flight work, and a draft changelog.
• SUMMARY.md — a rewritten rolling summary: where things stand, this week's highlights, active work streams, open items, key decisions, recurring patterns.

See examples/ for sample output.

Install

Recommended — the skills CLI. One command, no manual file copying, and it installs into whichever agents you have (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and more):

# Per-project (the journal lives with the repo)
npx skills add jaymay549/journal

# User-wide (available in every repo)
npx skills add jaymay549/journal --global

Manual install (curl or git clone)

Per-project:

mkdir -p .claude/skills/journal
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jaymay549/journal/main/SKILL.md \
  -o .claude/skills/journal/SKILL.md

User-wide:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/journal
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jaymay549/journal/main/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/journal/SKILL.md

Or clone and copy:

git clone https://github.com/jaymay549/journal.git
cp journal/SKILL.md .claude/skills/journal/SKILL.md

Usage

In Claude Code, any of these work:

• write a journal entry
• summarize today's work
• /journal (if you've wired it as a slash command)
• journal for 2026-04-15 (specific date)

The skill will:

1. Collect today's commits across all branches (not just yours) plus uncommitted work.
2. Read prior entries so it knows what was in flight.
3. Write the daily entry and rewrite the rolling summary.

Configuration

• Date — defaults to today. Pass YYYY-MM-DD to backfill.
• Output directory — defaults to docs/journal/. If that doesn't fit your repo layout, the skill will ask.
• Timezone — uses the repo's local timezone (whatever git log uses by default). Worth noting if your team spans zones.

Why it's structured this way

• All contributors, all branches. Team context beats personal context for a shared journal.
• Narrative, not bullets. Each effort reads like a brief from a smart colleague — problem, approach, resolution, status.
• Rolling summary gets better over time, not just longer. Completed items leave the "open" list.
• Lightweight-first data gathering. --stat before full diffs, so busy days don't blow the context window.

License

MIT