save-topic

Overview

Saves a structured summary of a topic to a persistent file. Supports saving the current topic, a specific topic by slug, or multiple topics at once.

Instructions

Preparation

1. Get the session ID from the SessionStart injection in your context: [SessionStart] session=SESSION_ID source=...
2. Get the plugin scripts path from the SessionStart injection: Plugin scripts path: /path/to/scripts
3. Determine which topics to save:
   • "save topic" / "checkpoint" → current topic only
   • "save topic X" → the specified topic slug
   • "save all topics" → all topics in this session

Saving the current topic

1. Get the current topic slug from your topic tag (the › \slug`` you've been outputting).
2. Write a structured summary using the format below (section headings in English, content in user's language, skip empty sections):

## Status
What was done, key progress.

## Decisions
What was chosen, why, what was rejected.

## Failures
What was tried, why it failed, the fix or workaround.

## Next Steps
What to do next. Be specific and actionable.

3. Run:

bash "<plugin_scripts_path>/save-topic.sh" "<slug>" "<session_id>" "<summary>"

Saving a non-current topic

For topics you are NOT currently discussing, your LLM context is likely incomplete. Use the --cold flag to force cold-read from JSONL:

bash "<plugin_scripts_path>/save-topic.sh" --cold "<slug>" "<session_id>" ""

The script will extract the conversation from JSONL and generate a summary via claude -p. The third argument (summary) is ignored when --cold succeeds.

Saving multiple topics

1. Get all topic slugs by running extract-topic.js (same as list-topics skill step 4): node "<plugin_scripts_path>/extract-topic.js" "$HOME/.claude/projects/<project_id>/<session_id>.jsonl" __all__ Filter out __untagged__ from the output.
2. Save the current topic using the normal path (LLM writes summary).
3. Save each non-current topic using the --cold flag.

Rules

• State facts only. No AI filler language.
• If an existing file for this slug exists, it will be overwritten with the new summary.
• This does NOT change the current topic — you continue with the same topic tag after saving.
• The summary should cover the entire topic from the start, not just recent progress.
• Do NOT copy or build upon any previous summary in your context. Write from scratch based on your full context each time.
• For non-current topics, always use --cold — do not attempt to write summaries from degraded LLM memory.