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LucasCooperBeyLucasCooperBey/claude-skills/skills/scratchpad/SKILL.md

scratchpad

Skill1 starsChanged 5 months agoMITView on GitHub

Compaction-resilient session notepad. Save working context that survives long conversations. Three tiers — pinned (always loaded), working (session), manual (permanent).

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

5 rules. 0 are common, 3 are distinctive, and 2 are very specific to this project.

  • 0

    Common

    Most of the 5 edited versions we read keep these.

  • 3

    Distinctive

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 2

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    Always: read on session start alongside MEMORY.md

    line 31
  2. Distinctive:

    Use for critical session facts: "Project uses bun", "On branch feature/xyz", "Don't touch the legacy monolith"

    line 32
  3. Distinctive:

    Keep SHORT — this eats into your context budget

    line 33
  4. Very specific:

    When a Working note proves valuable across sessions, promote it to memory with /scratchpad --promote (moves to MEMORY.md)

    line 79
  5. Very specific:

    When a session ends, stale Working entries can be pruned with /scratchpad --prune

    line 80

“Common” is measured: kept by at least 6 in 10 of the 5 edited versions of this file we could read. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Scratchpad — Compaction-Resilient Session Notes

Save important context to ~/.claude/artifacts/scratchpad.md that survives conversation compaction.

Why This Exists

During long sessions, context compaction drops earlier messages. Critical working notes — debugging breadcrumbs, temporary findings, "tried X because Y" — vanish. This gives you a persistent notepad with three priority tiers.

Different from memory: Memory is cross-session knowledge about the user/project. Scratchpad is within-session working state that might become memory later.

Commands

CommandAction
/scratchpad <content>Add to Working Memory with timestamp
/scratchpad --pin <content>Add to Pinned Context (always loaded, 500 char limit)
/scratchpad --save <content>Add to Manual section (never pruned)
/scratchpad --showDisplay current scratchpad contents
/scratchpad --pruneRemove Working entries older than 7 days
/scratchpad --clearClear Working Memory (keep Pinned + Manual)

Sections

Pinned Context (500 char limit)

  • Always read on session start alongside MEMORY.md
  • Use for critical session facts: "Project uses bun", "On branch feature/xyz", "Don't touch the legacy monolith"
  • Keep SHORT — this eats into your context budget
  • Overwrite semantics: new pin with same topic replaces old

Working Memory

  • Timestamped session notes
  • Auto-pruned after 7 days
  • Good for: debugging breadcrumbs, temporary findings, "tried X, didn't work because Y"
  • Newest entries at top

Manual

  • Never auto-pruned
  • User-controlled permanent notes
  • Good for: team contacts, deployment commands, recurring gotchas

File Format

# Scratchpad

## Pinned
Project uses bun. On branch claude/explore-feature-xyz. Legacy module is 9K lines — restyle only, don't refactor.

## Working
- [2026-04-01 20:30] Found auth bug in UserContext — missing useEffect dependency
- [2026-04-01 19:15] pretext library installed, sidebar-layout.ts created
- [2026-04-01 18:00] 4-team audit complete, ASCII atlas at docs/ASCII-SCREEN-ATLAS.md

## Manual
- Project dev server: bun dev (port 3000)
- Team contact: team@example.com
- DB studio: bun db:studio

Behavior

  1. Creates ~/.claude/artifacts/scratchpad.md if it doesn't exist
  2. Parses argument to determine section (--pin, --save, or default Working)
  3. Appends with timestamp for Working entries
  4. Warns if Pinned exceeds 500 chars
  5. Confirms what was saved

Integration

  • Scratchpad is loaded on session start if it exists
  • When a Working note proves valuable across sessions, promote it to memory with /scratchpad --promote (moves to MEMORY.md)
  • When a session ends, stale Working entries can be pruned with /scratchpad --prune

Examples

/scratchpad The sidebar width transition bug is in client-pdf.ts:800-809, re-join step
/scratchpad --pin On branch claude/explore-pretext-integration. Don't push to main.
/scratchpad --save Project uses 5-tier PDF fallback: Typst → Cloud → Puppeteer → HTML → JSON
/scratchpad --show
/scratchpad --prune

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