/journal

Draft a journal entry from a session's work, tuned to the audience you name. Standard-tier — pending audit at bassclef-web#193.

Copy the command

/journal

Type it bare, or paste it with loose context after — Claude figures out the rest.

Solves

A session ships a decision, insight, debugging arc, or launch — and drafting a journal entry aimed at a specific audience (private-equity partners, board operators, technical founders, eng managers) starts from a blank page every time.

Payoff

Reads the session commits, session log, and any chronicle draft. Returns an audience-tuned journal entry with a strength-rating table at the top.

Takes in

Session commits and session log
Chronicle draft (if any)
Audience name in loose prose

Returns

Journal draft at docs/operator-private/journals/YYYY-MM-DD.md
Audience-recommendations table with hook strength
Publish-priority signal

Runs with

/kiss /session-log /session-end

Needs first

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Called by

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Deep dive — 8 sections · ~360 words · original SKILL.mdScroll for tutorial ↓

What it does

Reads the session's commits, session log, and current chronicle draft (if one exists). Drafts a journal entry per the audience you name.

Type /journal alone and the skill picks the audience from context. Or name one:

private-equity partners
board-level operators
chief product/tech officers
technical founders
eng leaders and managers

Say it however feels natural — /journal for the PE crowd, /journal aimed at founders, /journal — board audience all work. Claude figures out which audience you named.

Returns a draft under docs/operator-private/journals/YYYY-MM-DD.md with an audience-recommendations table at the top.

The audience-recommendations table

Every draft opens with this table:

| Post | Primary audience | Hook strength | Publish priority |
|------|------------------|---------------|------------------|

You use it to decide which audience matches, whether the hook is strong enough to publish, and when to ship. Weak-hook drafts stay private. Strong-hook drafts publish to the audience they name.

High-value moments the skill looks for

Scope kills — a feature the team decided NOT to build, with reasoning
Architecture choices — a boring-tech pick with the reasons the boring version wins
Process insights — what broke, what worked, what surprised
Design pushback — a UX call defended against a PM ask
Quantified results — N agents, M minutes, K artifacts

Sessions without any of the above rarely produce useful journal material. The skill will still draft one; you may decide it is not worth publishing.

Where the draft lives

Local Markdown at docs/operator-private/journals/YYYY-MM-DD.md
Optionally pushed to Google Docs if journal_doc_id is set in substrate.config.md
Never committed to public repos automatically — journals are operator-facing by default

Where in the SDLC

Why this phase: Short-form journal entries from session work. Fires at session-end (Ship) or during Operate housekeeping.

Where this goes next

You're at standard tier. The operator-private upgrade layer unlocks ultra tier — embedding shortlist and Claude re-rank across the full 96-luminary catalog, plus everything standard has. Ultra graduation is founder-blessed at launch — operator hand-picks from Substack, Discord, and social. See ADR-006 for the mechanism.

/kiss — grade-check the draft
/session-log — the record /journal reads
/session-end — end-of-session wrap-up flow

Shipped by @kingofrock · [Substack — TBD]