/knowledge-compound — Document Solutions & Learnings

Capture solutions, decisions, and learnings into a searchable knowledge base at docs/solutions/. Makes every unit of work compound into future productivity.

When to Use

After solving a tricky bug
After making an architectural decision
After a session with useful discoveries
User says "document this", "compound this", "save this"
After completing /engineer-work or /engineer-review

Process

Step 1: Determine What to Document

Ask the user what they want to capture:

AskUserQuestion:
  question: "What would you like to document?"
  options:
    - "A problem and its solution"
    - "An architectural decision"
    - "A pattern or technique I discovered"
    - "A session summary (multiple learnings)"

Step 2: Gather Context

Based on the type:

Problem/Solution:

What was the problem? (symptoms, error messages)
What caused it? (root cause)
What fixed it? (the solution with key code)
What didn't work? (dead ends worth documenting)
How to prevent it? (prevention strategy)

Architectural Decision:

What was the decision?
What options were considered?
Why was this option chosen? (rationale)
What are the tradeoffs?
When would you revisit this?

Pattern/Technique:

What is the pattern?
When should it be used?
Example implementation
Gotchas or edge cases

Session Summary:

What were the key decisions made?
What problems were encountered and solved?
What patterns were established?
What's left to do?

If context is available from the current conversation (recent problem-solving, code changes), extract it automatically and confirm with the user rather than asking from scratch.

Step 3: Write the Document

Use the solution template from references/solution-template.md.

YAML frontmatter is critical — it enables future searchability:

---
title: "Clear, searchable title"
date: YYYY-MM-DD
category: auth|database|api|ui|state|navigation|performance|testing|deployment|typescript|tooling|architecture|mobile|general
tags: [minimum 2, maximum 8 relevant tags]
difficulty: low|medium|high
applicability: specific|moderate|broad
---

Category selection rules:

Choose the most specific matching category
If multi-category, choose the root cause category
Use tags for secondary categories

Step 4: Save

Save to docs/solutions/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md where slug is a short, descriptive kebab-case name.

If docs/solutions/ doesn't exist, create it.

Step 5: Confirm

Show the user the file path and a brief summary of what was captured. Suggest related skills:

Want to create a plan from this? → /engineer-plan
Want to continue building? → /engineer-work
More to document? → Run /knowledge-compound again