ABOUTME: Project knowledge capture through engaging LEARNING.md files

ABOUTME: Documents architecture, decisions, bugs, lessons learned in conversational style

Learning Documentation

Quality Notes

Take your time reviewing recent work thoroughly before writing
Quality of insights matters more than covering every change
Re-read what you wrote: is it useful to a future reader, or just filler?

Purpose

Capture project knowledge in LEARNING.md - a living document that grows with the project. Not boring docs, but engaging technical storytelling.

When to Update

After fixing non-trivial bugs
After architectural decisions
After integrating new tech
After solving tricky problems
Before context switches (end of day/week)

Structure

Sections: Project Overview, Architecture (mermaid diagrams), Tech Stack & Decisions (table: Technology | Why | Trade-offs), Lessons Learned (dated: Context → Problem → Solution → Takeaway), Pitfalls & Gotchas, Best Practices Discovered

Writing Style

Do	Don't
Conversational tone	Dry technical prose
Analogies that clarify	Jargon without context
Concrete examples	Abstract descriptions
"We tried X, it broke because Y"	"X is not recommended"
Honest about mistakes	Sanitized corporate-speak

Examples

Good:

We spent 2 hours debugging why webhooks weren't firing. Turns out Redis was silently dropping messages when memory hit 80%. Added maxmemory-policy volatile-lru and monitoring. Lesson: always monitor your message queues, silence is not golden.

Bad:

Webhook reliability was improved by adjusting Redis configuration parameters.

Workflow

Read existing LEARNING.md (or create if missing)
Review recent work (git log --oneline -10)
Ask what was learned, what was tricky
Append new lessons in conversational style (dated, searchable)
Capture solutions in docs/solutions/[category]/ for searchable reuse

Solutions Directory

For solved problems worth referencing again, create files in docs/solutions/:

docs/solutions/
├── auth/           → Authentication, authorization, sessions
├── performance/    → Profiling, caching, optimization
├── infrastructure/ → CI/CD, Docker, deployment
├── database/       → Migrations, queries, indexing
├── testing/        → Patterns, fixtures, flaky test fixes
└── debugging/      → Hard bugs, investigation techniques

Format: docs/solutions/[category]/YYYY-MM-DD_short-description.md

Each solution file:

# Problem
[What broke / what we needed]

# Solution
[What fixed it, with code if relevant]

# Why It Works
[Root cause or design rationale, 1-3 sentences]

When to use LEARNING.md vs solutions/: LEARNING.md for narrative retrospectives, architectural decisions, broad lessons. Solutions/ for specific, searchable, reusable fixes; "how did we solve X?" answers.

Vault copy: After writing to docs/solutions/, also append to vault: obsidian append file="<project> - Solutions" content="### YYYY-MM-DD: [title]\n[Problem/Solution/Why]". Creates cross-project discoverability.

Session Analysis

Analyze past sessions to identify improvement opportunities. Session files live in ~/.claude/projects/ (project paths: slashes→dashes).

CRITICAL Rules

NEVER read raw session files (100k+ lines, token killer)
ALWAYS use jq to extract summaries
Focus on patterns, not individual messages

What to Look For

Pattern	Example	Fix
Token waste	Read same file 5+ times	Cache key info, update CLAUDE.md
Wrong paths	Built feature, then found existing code	Better initial search, architecture docs
Repeated mistakes	Same lint error 3 sessions	Pre-commit hook, CLAUDE.md note
Missing automation	Manual steps every session	Script it, add to workflow
Context loss	Re-learn after compaction	Save state to LEARNING.md before limit

Key jq Commands

Sessions live in ~/.claude/projects/PROJECT_NAME/session_*.json.

Tool call counts: jq '[.messages[].content[]? | select(.type=="tool_use") | .name] | group_by(.) | map({tool: .[0], count: length}) | sort_by(-.count)'
Repeated reads: jq -r '... | select(.name=="Read") | .input.file_path' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
Error patterns: jq -r '... | select(.type=="tool_result" and (.content | tostring | test("error"))) | .content' | head -50

Propose Improvements As

CLAUDE.md updates, new skills, scripts, LEARNING.md entries, pre-commit hooks.

Vault Pattern Annotation

When a lesson learned maps to a skill domain, append to ## Skill Candidates in the relevant Second Brain note:

obsidian append file="Second Brain - Development" content="\n| <pattern> | <target-skill> | <project> | YYYY-MM-DD | weak |"

Signal starts as weak. The knowledge-sync skill promotes to strong when 3+ projects or 2+ independent sources confirm the pattern. Create the ## Skill Candidates section (with table header) if it doesn't exist yet.

learning-docs