Journal — one file per day inside knowledge/journal/

decision Fri Jul 03 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) journallayoutknowledgedecision

Journal — one file per day, inside knowledge/

Locked

Path: knowledge/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md (ISO 8601 date filename).
One file per day. All sessions + Screenpipe digests append to that day's file.
Inside knowledge/ tree — not a sibling folder. Journal is durable knowledge per everything-durable-to-cloud.
OKF frontmatter required:

---
type: journal
title: Journal YYYY-MM-DD
description: Auto-generated daily journal — agent sessions + Screenpipe digests
tags: [journal, auto]
timestamp: YYYY-MM-DD
format_version: okf-v0.1
status: active
---

Structure per file

# Journal YYYY-MM-DD

## HH:MM <source> — <slug>
<block content>

## HH:MM <source> — <slug>
<block content>

<source> = Claude Code session or Screenpipe digest or (future) OpenCode session, Kilo session.

Why inside knowledge/

Agent discoverability. okf-prompt-lookup.ts scans knowledge/. Journal outside = agents don't see it. Journal inside = agents can Grep past decisions naturally.
Single tree navigation. No two-tree split (journal/ sibling + knowledge/ = two mental maps).
Git parity. knowledge/ is the durable-info tree per knowledge-everything-caveman. Journal is durable.
OKF consistency. type: journal is a natural OKF type; the taxonomy already supports it.

Why one file per day (not per session, not rolling log)

Per session (timestamped filenames) → file explosion (~5-10 files/day), harder to browse.
Single rolling log.md → one huge file that grows forever, git diff becomes useless.
Per day → ls knowledge/journal/ | wc -l scales linearly with age, git log --follow per file works, natural date-based lookup.

Excluded from `docs(knowledge):` conventional commits

Journal files auto-committed as chore(journal): <date> ..., not docs(knowledge):. Reason:

docs(knowledge): implies a durable decision/rule/runbook authored deliberately per self-update-rule.
Journal entries are auto-generated — flooding docs(knowledge): with them dilutes signal for git log --grep 'docs(knowledge)' audit.
chore(journal): keeps auditable but out of decision-history stream.

Indexing

knowledge/journal/index.md — auto-generated monthly. Lists all journal files in the month with one-line hooks per file. Regenerated by a small script during monthly rotation.

Retention

Forever. See [[auto-journal-cc-sessionend-plus-screenpipe-2026-07-03]] §Retention.

Rollback trigger

Journal files bloat knowledge/index.md scoring → exclude journal/ from okf-prompt-lookup.ts scan (recall-hurt but signal-gain).
Journal contains sensitive corp info by accident → tighten writer redaction, git filter-repo past commits, add knowledge/journal/.gitignore for classified days if needed.

Wiring status

Not wired yet. Directory knowledge/journal/ will be created on first auto-journal write. Index generator + .gitkeep land in the wiring commit.

[[auto-journal-cc-sessionend-plus-screenpipe-2026-07-03]]
[[pkm-stack-2026-07-03]]
[[knowledge-everything-caveman]]
[[self-update-rule]]