journaling-codebase-decisions

What problem does it solve?

Codebases only capture what was built, not the reasoning behind architecture choices, pattern selections, and past mistakes, leading to repeated errors, slow onboarding, and lost context when team members change roles.

Core Features & Use Cases

• Living Journal Maintenance: Automatically maintains a centralized .claude/journal.md file in the repository root to track architecture decisions, established patterns, anti-patterns, mistakes, and current codebase state.
• Structured Documentation Templates: Provides pre-built markdown templates for consistent entry formatting for decisions, patterns, mistakes, and other journal sections.
• Use Case: When joining a new development team, use this skill to quickly generate an initial journal from existing code and documentation, or after finalizing a key tech stack choice, document the tradeoffs and rationale for future reference.

Quick Start

Use the journaling-codebase-decisions skill to document the recent decision to migrate our user authentication system from session-based to JWT, including the context, options considered, and known tradeoffs.