claude-code-devlog-hookslisted

# Dev Journal Discipline (claude-code-devlog-hooks) A discipline for keeping a daily development journal while working as (or with) a coding agent, plus the three Claude Code hooks that make the habit stick. The discipline itself is tool-agnostic: any agent that can read instructions and append to a Markdown file can follow it. The enforcement layer (the hooks) is Claude Code specific. ## Why A Journal, And Why Hooks Lessons learned during agent sessions — environment quirks, failed approaches, decisions and their reasons — evaporate when the session ends. A daily journal turns them into a searchable record, and distilled topic notes turn repeated lessons into a first-stop reference that prevents repeating old mistakes. The failure mode is always the same: "I will write it up at the end." Then the context window fills, the session ends, and nothing is written. The three hooks exist to defeat exactly that failure mode: | Layer | Hook event | Behavior | | --- | --- | --- | | Routine | SessionStart | Injects this discipline into context; records the session start time as a marker | | Reminder | UserPromptSubmit | If the session is old enough AND today's journal is stale (default: 20 min for both), nudges once in a while — never blocks | | Backstop | Stop | If today's journal was not touched since the session started, blocks the end of the turn once with instructions — then stays quiet | ## The Routine 1. **Before starting work**: search the `topics/` folder of the journal