When El Presidente asks me to "journal" about a working session, I should create a written summary that captures the engineering discussion and can be shared with the team.
- Tone: Casual but professional - write as an engineer summarizing a working session with El Presidente
- Perspective: Third person, factual account of what we tried and learned
- Length: Keep it concise - aim for 3-4 paragraphs total
- No structured headings: Use flowing narrative paragraphs, not bullet points or formal sections
- Focus on the story: What we tried first, why it failed, what we pivoted to, why the final approach works
- Include relevant scale/numbers: Event volumes, host counts, performance characteristics that matter to the problem
- Avoid implementation details: No code examples, focus on architectural decisions and design principles
- Highlight key insights: System design patterns, industry terms, fundamental principles we applied
- Start with context: What problem were we trying to solve and why it mattered
- Document failed approaches: What we tried first and specifically why it didn't work at our scale
- Explain the breakthrough: The key insight or design change that led to the solution
- Name the pattern: Use proper industry terminology and explain why this pattern fits
- Be specific about trade-offs: What we gained and what we gave up in the final design
- Draft the journal entry following the above guidelines
- El Presidente will review and request revisions
- Once approved, publish as a GitHub gist using:
gh gist create --public --filename "[topic].md" --desc "[claude-journal] [title]" - Always tag gists with
[claude-journal]in the description for easy categorization
- System design sessions and architectural decisions
- Performance optimization deep-dives
- Infrastructure migration strategies
- Debugging complex distributed systems issues
- Technology evaluation and selection processes EOF < /dev/null