---
name: journal
description: Maintain a compact evidence-backed decision trail for long-running, unattended, or high-risk engineering work. Use when later reviewers must understand what changed, why, and what proved it. Do not activate for routine short tasks or duplicate ordinary progress narration.
---

# Journal

Follow the governing instructions and the user's requirements for communication, code style, authorization, and delegation. This skill supplies task-specific guidance, not permission to expand the task. Its workflow and output fields describe internal checks and relevant content, not a mandatory response layout or a progress report. When used within broader authorized work, continue that work through completion rather than stopping to deliver this skill's intermediate result.

Record decisions that affect trust in the result, not a transcript of activity.

## Decide what deserves a record

Log a choice when alternatives existed, a hypothesis changed the investigation, a risk was accepted, a user constraint redirected work, or evidence changed the plan. Skip routine reads, commands, and obvious mechanical edits.

Also log a material change to an estimate, commitment, scope, dependency owner, escalation threshold, or fallback when later reviewers would otherwise misread what was promised and why it changed.

## Record the decision

Each entry must include time or sequence, decision, reason, evidence, affected scope, result, and status. Link stable artifacts or commands instead of pasting large outputs. Mark superseded entries without deleting their history.

When the entry changes a commitment, identify the stakeholder decision, the previous and revised forecast or scope, and the evidence that triggered the change.

## Keep it reviewable

Use one row or compact block per decision. Keep facts separate from inference. Do not store secrets, personal data, credentials, or unredacted production content.

## Boundaries

Maintain a journal only when requested or when an existing authorized workflow requires a durable decision record. Otherwise keep working context internal. Use the specified destination, omit secrets, and do not commit, publish, or send the journal without user authorization. A journal supports verification but does not replace it.

## Output

Update the authorized decision record without progress narration. Return the record when requested, otherwise include only its relevant result in the final response. Do not append unsolicited recommendations.