Mortdecai
9ff8e915b8
User-agnostic, shareable AI-assisted development workflow distilled from 26+ real projects. Includes 9 composable rules, 4 project templates, pre-push secret scanning hook, 3 methodology guides, and customization docs. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
65 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
65 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
# Session Discipline
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Rules for maintaining continuity and quality across AI coding sessions.
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## Session Start
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1. **Read CLAUDE.md first.** It has the project state, architecture, and conventions.
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2. **Check the latest session handoff** in `.claude/sessions/` for continuity from the previous session.
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3. **One focused task per session.** Don't drift across unrelated domains. If scope grows, organize it — don't chase it.
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## During Work
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4. **Persist decisions to files, not conversation.** If it's only in chat history, it won't survive compaction or a fresh session.
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5. **Don't verify context eagerly.** Only verify when about to ACT on data. Documentation drifts — trust it for reading, verify before executing.
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6. **When the user cancels your action**, ask what they did. Don't save stale context from a cancelled operation.
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7. **Credentials are in CLAUDE.md or .env files.** Don't ask the user for passwords that are already documented.
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8. **When creating new scripts, tools, or changing how things work**, update CLAUDE.md immediately so future sessions know about it.
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## Commit Discipline
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9. **Push to your remote after meaningful changes.** Don't let work accumulate locally.
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10. **Commit frequently** — after every completed function, bug fix, or test addition. Not in batches.
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## Session End
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11. **Before closing a session**, summarize what was learned and ask the user:
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- "Should anything from this session be saved to memory?"
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- "Did you cancel any of my actions and fix it yourself?" (if yes, note what they did)
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- "Is any context from this session wrong or stale?"
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12. **Write a session summary** to `.claude/sessions/YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM.md` with:
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- Main task and outcome
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- Key decisions and why
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- What changed (files, commits)
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- What's left to do
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## Handoff Documents
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When a session ends with unfinished work, create `.claude/sessions/handoff-YYYYMMDD[-topic].md`:
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```markdown
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# Session Handoff — YYYY-MM-DD
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## What Was Done
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[Completed work, commits, key outcomes]
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## Current State
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[Branch, working tree, CI status, what's deployed/tagged]
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## Next Steps (ordered)
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[Exactly what the next session should do, with file paths and line numbers]
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```
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The handoff is the *start message* for the next session. Include only what the next session needs to be productive immediately — not a full history.
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**When to create a handoff:**
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- Context is running low and work remains
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- Switching to a completely different task domain
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- Before a planned fresh session
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- User requests a continuation message
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**When NOT to create a handoff:**
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- Work is complete (commit messages suffice)
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- Remaining work is trivially discoverable from git status
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