Clothing Inventory Notes

Overview

The reader already owns it. They open the note to answer "what exactly is this, how do I wash it without ruining it, and where do I get another" — never "should I buy it". That last question belongs to product-search; keep the two apart.

Core principle: the garment is the primary source, the listing is corroboration. The sewn-in label is a legally required statement about this specific object; website copy is marketing about a product line, and it goes stale, gets carried over between seasons, and disagrees. When they conflict, the label wins and the conflict gets written down.

Second principle: empty beats estimated. A number, once written, is indistinguishable from a verified one. Uncertain facts go in prose where they can carry their caveat — never into frontmatter.

When to use

• A garment is being added to inventory/items/ for the first time
• An existing garment note is being corrected, or a label/measurement is finally read
• Label photos have arrived for a garment already in the register

Not for: deciding what to buy (product-search), bags and non-clothing (the shared schema still applies — see inventory/Inventory.md — but the label/care/sizing machinery below is garment-specific), or anything in the vault's restricted areas.

The section contract

Write these sections, in this order. Omit one only if it is genuinely empty.

The listing line (non-negotiable)

Every garment note carries a clickable link to the official product page, directly under the H1 — not buried in References, where finding it costs a scroll and a scan.

**[Official listing](https://store.example.com/products/1026233011)** · ¥31,900 list / ¥29,800 sale · ⛔ sold out · read 2026-09-06

1. Link to the brand's own page where possible; an authorised retailer second; an archive snapshot third
2. Price with currency — the list price, never what was paid (that is cost, and it stays empty without a receipt)
3. Availability, because a sold-out listing changes what "get another" means
4. Date read — listings go stale and eventually 404

Mirror the URL into the url: frontmatter key so it is queryable, and keep the annotated entry in # References as the provenance record. All three, every time.

⚠️ When no official page exists, say so on that line and leave url: empty — **No official listing** — brand defunct; spec preserved below. A blank url: is a queue (the Needs product link view), a wrong one is a lie. Never guess a domain: a 200 proves a server answered, not that you reached the brand.

⭐ The listing will outlive its usefulness — copy the facts in, don't link and hope. Price, size chart, colourways, fabric and composition all get transcribed into the note. The link is provenance, not storage.

Frontmatter — deltas from the shared schema

inventory/Inventory.md owns the key list and their order. Do not restate it; do not contradict it. Garments differ from bags in exactly these ways:

Note titles are ASCII (HERMES, COMME DES GARCONS); aliases carries the accented form (HERMÈS, COMME DES GARÇONS) so search finds either.

Care symbols — transcribe all of them, in label order

Japanese garments use JIS L0001 (ISO 3758-aligned). Build a \| \| Symbol \| Means \| table with one row per symbol.

⚠️ The bars are the part that gets missed, and they are instructions to a cleaner, not decoration — under Ⓕ or Ⓦ, one bar means mild, two means very mild. Count the iron's dots (1 = 110 °C, 2 = 150 °C, 3 = 200 °C) and check the drying square for a corner stripe (in the shade) as well as the bar (line dry).

⭐ Read the symbols as one argument, not a list. A run of fussy-looking instructions usually all defend the same property — loft, colour, or a stretch fibre's recovery. Say which, and name the one instruction that actually matters day to day.

Photos

The filename spec lives in inventory/Inventory.md. What is garment-specific:

• Label photos are kind: serial, always with a -<detail> suffix — -brand-label, -spec-label, -care-label-front, -care-label-back. The care label is the garment's identifying document, the role a serial plate plays on a bag. Bare -serial-01 would be indistinguishable in a flattened export
• Read every label at full resolution before transcribing. Crop and upscale the symbol block; a two-dot iron read as one dot is a 40 °C error
• A vendor image is a stand-in, not a record. It clears the Needs photos view while proving nothing about condition, wear or even the right colourway. Flag it in the caption and in ## Notes, with the exact command to fix it: python3 scripts/file-inventory-photos.py "<Item Name>" --kind mine
• A worn shot is filed as a face-free crop — the garment region only, the same as ootd files it
• Verify the product image after downloading — read it back and check it shows this garment, in this colourway
• ⭐ A white label in frame is a white-balance anchor. Black-versus-navy can often be settled from the photos already taken — sample the fabric, correct against the known-white label, and report the numbers. Do this before recommending anyone buy a lamp

Rules

• Tables and bullets over prose. Prose only where reasoning genuinely needs sentences.
• Trust the label over the website, and record the conflict rather than silently picking. Offer the competing explanations — a site error and a between-seasons fabric change are different stories with the same resolution.
• Stamp every vendor claim with the date read. Prices, stock and size charts are perishable.
• Unknown is a value. "Not published" and an empty field beat an estimate. Never write a plausible date, price or measurement.
• Check the size chart for internal consistency before trusting it. If one column stops rising with size, it is a typo, not a cut — say which reading you believe and put "measure the garment" in ## Open questions.
• Measurements are garment measurements, not body measurements — laid flat, chest doubled. Say it every time.
• Supersede by annotation, never deletion. A corrected reading keeps the wrong one visible with the reason, because the wrong version is usually the intuitive one and will otherwise be re-derived.
• Explain empty fields affirmatively. An empty evaluation: gets a Notes bullet saying the catalogs record pre-purchase research and this was not researched — otherwise it reads as an unfinished note.
• Name the transferable finding. If something learned here would help next time, mark it ⭐ and state it as a rule in the note. Carrying it into the vault's CLAUDE.md or this skill is a proposal in the closing summary, applied only after the owner says yes. When run from ootd, ootd's write scope applies.
• Score the garment against the vault's own frameworks where one applies, and resolve the tension honestly rather than scolding — a material that loses to the framework can still be right for the role.

Common mistakes

Scope note — what generalises

Everything above the ## Care symbols heading applies to any owned item: the listing line, the url: key, the confidence table, empty-beats-estimated, supersede-by-annotation. The garment-specific parts are the care-symbol table, ## Measurements, the capacity_l omission and the label-as-serial photo convention. If a general inventory-item skill is ever factored out, that is the seam to cut along.

Template

Start from template-clothing-inventory.md in this directory.