dev-journal

A Claude Code plugin that adds a /journal skill for development journaling — tracking decisions, sessions, and architecture changes per-project.

Commands

Command	Description
/journal	Write a new entry (default) — summarizes the current session
/journal <title>	Write a new entry with a specific title
/journal search <query>	Search entries by filename, then full text
/journal last [N]	Show the last N entries (default 1)
/journal help	Show available commands and usage
/journal check	Find entries relevant to the current conversation
/journal init	Set up the journal directory, README, GUIDE.md, CLAUDE.md @import, and first entry

Features

• Proactive context surfacing — /journal check is designed to be invoked automatically when starting work or before architectural decisions, not just on explicit command.
• Auto-init — Writing your first entry automatically runs init if no journal exists yet.
• CLAUDE.md integration — init writes journal guidance to docs/journal/GUIDE.md and adds an @import reference in your project's CLAUDE.md, so Claude knows to check past decisions before making new ones.
• Two-phase search — Searches filenames first, then falls back to full-text grep with context excerpts.

Entry format

Entries are stored in docs/journal/ with the naming convention:

YYYY-MM-DD--NNN-short-description.md

• YYYY-MM-DD — date of the entry
• NNN — zero-padded per-day sequence number (resets each day)
• short-description — slugified title

Each entry contains a structured template: summary, what changed, and context/rationale.

Installation

/plugin marketplace add juliuszfedyk/dev-journal
/plugin install dev-journal@dev-journal

How it works

This plugin contains no runtime code. The entire skill is defined in skills/journal/SKILL.md as a prompt template. When invoked, Claude Code follows the instructions in SKILL.md using its built-in tools (Read, Write, Glob, Grep) to manage journal entries.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Privacy

This plugin collects no data. See PRIVACY.md for details.