Journal Manager Skill

Create and manage Obsidian work journals. Record "what I thought at this point" as thinking logs.

Activation Triggers

Create (proactive): After experiments/analyses, decisions, incident responses, comparisons, or user request Organize: /journal-review, /journal-cleanup, auto-suggest when active files > 20

Journal Location

• Path: /mnt/c/Users/matsushita/obsidian/notes/WORK/{ORG}_{PROJECT}/journal/YYYY-MM-DD_HHmm_topic.md
• Date in JST. Topic in hyphenated English or Japanese (keep short)

auto memory vs Journal

• auto memory: Technical facts and patterns (long-lived) → .claude/projects/*/memory/
• Journal: Chronological thinking process (short-to-mid lived) → Obsidian journal/

Part 1: Creating Journals

Templates

Experiment/Analysis: Background → Conditions/Setup → Results (numeric tables) → Findings → Conclusion/Next actions Decision: Context → Options → Judgment and reasoning → Trade-offs → Next actions Incident Response: Situation → Root cause → Actions taken → Prevention measures → Lessons learned Work Log: Tasks done → Design decisions (if any) → TODOs (remaining)

Principles

• One topic per file (multiple per day OK). Use tables for numeric data
• Record "what I thought at this point" — valuable even if conclusions change later
• Place persistent data in the parent directory of journal/
• Do NOT record: code diffs (Git handles that), trivial task logs, technical facts suited for auto memory

Part 2: Review and Organization

Phase 1: Review (analysis only, no changes)

1. Read all files with Explore agent, classify by theme
2. Determine status for each file:
   • Archive: Conclusion already reflected elsewhere / superseded by later work / completed TODOs / approach replaced
   • Consolidate: 3+ consecutive files on same theme / problem-identification + solution pairs
   • Defer: Explicitly marked "future work" research topics (with start conditions)
   • Keep: Sole source of information / latest analysis on active theme / incident response records
3. Present organization proposal as a table, wait for user approval

Phase 2: Organize (after approval)

• Archive: Move original file to archives/ as-is (no content changes)
• Consolidate: Read source files → create merged file (oldest date + theme name, list sources at top, preserve numeric tables faithfully) → move originals to archives/
• Defer: Merge related files into one in deferred/ (state resume conditions at top) → move originals to archives/

Phase 3: Promotion Check

After promotion, add "→ reflected in X" marker to the journal entry.

Directory Structure

{project}/journal/
├── *.md              # Active
├── archives/         # Consolidated/obsolete originals
└── deferred/         # Future research topics

Important Notes

• Archive means move, not delete (originals kept in archives/)
• Never drop data during consolidation (faithfully copy numeric tables)
• When in doubt, keep. Create aggressively, organize cautiously
• Deferred entries must state concrete resume conditions (not just "someday")