Private Notes

Session notes, research, and personal TODOs that stay private and never get committed.

What Are Private Notes?

Private notes live in docs/notes/ and stay private (gitignored). They’re for:

• Session logs
• Research results
• Promotion strategies
• Personal TODOs
• Any context that shouldn’t be shared

The .open Convention

Use the .open.md suffix to mark notes that should be loaded by /catchup:

docs/notes/
├── session-2026-02-01.open.md   ← /catchup loads this
├── session-2026-01-30.md        ← closed, ignored
└── research-topic.open.md       ← /catchup loads this

Why filename markers?

• Simple glob: *.open.md
• No content parsing needed
• Visible in file listings
• Close by renaming the file

Managing Notes

Create a Note

# Create an open note (will be loaded by /catchup)
touch docs/notes/my-research.open.md

Close a Note

When done with a note, remove the .open suffix:

mv docs/notes/session-2026-02-01.open.md docs/notes/session-2026-02-01.md

Closed notes stay in the folder for reference but won’t be loaded.

How /catchup Uses Notes

1. Globs for docs/notes/*.open.md
2. Reads all matching files
3. Shows what’s relevant
4. Includes it in session start

Notes vs Records

Notes are for anything private. Records are for decisions the team should see.

Setup

The docs/notes/ directory should be in your .gitignore:

# Private notes
docs/notes/

This is added automatically by /init-project.

Related

• /catchup - Loads open notes
• Records - Public documentation
• Workflow - Session management