Engineering Diary

Context that lives only in your head or in a chat session is gone within days. A short daily log in plain Markdown keeps what you shipped, what you learned and what is still open. It takes about five minutes a day.

Structure

Write one file per day, such as diary/YYYY-MM-DD.md, in a notes folder of your choice. Use three sections:

# YYYY-MM-DD

## What I shipped

- Fixed the login timeout.
- Cached dependencies in CI.

## What I learned

- `FlutterError.onError` handles framework errors and `PlatformDispatcher.instance.onError` handles errors outside Flutter callbacks.
- BLoC `restartable()` cancels the in-flight event when a new one arrives, which suits typeahead. `droppable()` ignores new events while one is in flight.

## Open loops

- Renew the expiring signing certificate.
- Update the README install steps.

When to write

• Write at the end of each working session, without formatting or editing.
• At the start of the next session, read the previous entry's open loops first.
• Once a week, carry any open loop that is still open into a task list or drop it on purpose.

For agents

• At the end of a session, offer to append the day's entry with what changed, what was learned and what is left.
• Write facts with evidence, such as a commit, a file or a link, not impressions.
• At the start of a session, read the latest entry before planning.
• Never put secrets, credentials or personal data in the diary.

Tooling

Plain Markdown in any editor is enough. Useful additions are a snippet for the template, a shell alias that opens today's file, and a weekly review that lists the week's open loops. Keep it boring, because the tool that survives is the one with the least friction.