Journal: Reflect

Overview

A structured retrospective for the current session. Reads the journal entries written during this session, analyzes what happened, and produces actionable takeaways that improve future work.

This is not a summary — it's a thinking exercise. The agent examines its own work with fresh eyes.

Announce at start: "Reflecting on this session."

The Process

1. Gather Session Data

Read .claude/journal.jsonl and filter to entries from the current session (by timestamp range or session identifier). Also check:

• git log for commits made during the session
• git diff --stat for uncommitted changes
• TaskList for task completion status
• Active plan status (if any)

2. Reconstruct the Timeline

Build a chronological narrative of what happened:

Session Timeline:
  10:15 — Started with zenflow:collab, exploring SSE implementation
  10:30 — Found rate limiter bug, delegated to worktree agent
  10:45 — Designed notification schema together
  11:00 — Created plan (resources/plans/245-notifications.md)
  11:15 — Started zenflow:dispatch, tasks 1-3 in parallel
  12:00 — Tasks 1-2 complete, task 3 partial (missing reconnection)
  12:15 — Fixed task 3 with implementer re-dispatch
  12:30 — zenflow:check-work passed all gates
  12:35 — Rate limiter PR merged from worktree delegate

3. Analyze

Ask these questions about the session:

What went well?

• Which approaches worked on the first try?
• Where did the pipeline save time?
• What decisions turned out to be right?

What was harder than expected?

• Where did you spend the most time?
• What required multiple attempts?
• Where were the surprises?

What was learned?

• New patterns or techniques discovered
• Codebase knowledge that wasn't obvious before
• Tool or framework behaviors that were surprising

What should change?

• Process improvements for next time
• Rules or conventions that should be added/updated
• Documentation gaps discovered

4. Produce Takeaways

Format the reflection as actionable items:

## Session Reflection — 2026-03-27

### Timeline
[chronological narrative]

### What Went Well
- Two-stage dispatch review caught the missing reconnection handler
  before it reached check-work — saved a full test cycle
- Worktree delegation for the rate limiter was fire-and-forget,
  kept the main session clean

### What Was Harder Than Expected
- SSE reconnection logic needed 3 iterations to get the backoff
  timing right — the test was flaky with exact timing assertions
  → **Takeaway:** Use tolerance-based assertions for timing tests

### What Was Learned
- Bun's SSE implementation requires explicit keep-alive pings
  (not documented, found by reading source)
  → **Consider:** Add to project docs or CLAUDE.md

### Suggested Actions
- [ ] Add timing test conventions to .claude/rules/testing.md
- [ ] Document SSE keep-alive requirement in ARCHITECTURE.md
- [ ] Update zen.local.md audit sections to include new SSE module

### For Future Sessions
- When working on SSE, load the stream handler source first —
  the types don't tell the full story
- The notification schema is stable now — safe to build on

5. Write Reflection Entry

Append a journal entry of type reflection:

{
  "timestamp": "2026-03-27T12:40:00.000Z",
  "type": "reflection",
  "summary": "Session reflection: SSE notifications + rate limiter fix",
  "insights": "Two-stage review caught reconnection gap; worktree delegation kept context clean",
  "suggestedActions": [
    "Add timing test conventions to testing.md",
    "Document SSE keep-alive in ARCHITECTURE.md"
  ],
  "sessionDuration": "2.5 hours",
  "entriesReviewed": 4
}

6. Offer Follow-ups

After presenting the reflection, ask:

"Any of these suggested actions worth doing now?"

Options:

• Update docs — invoke zenflow:docs for documentation gaps
• Update rules — add new conventions to .claude/rules/
• Create issues — log suggested actions as tasks for later
• Save and close — reflection is recorded, act on it next session

When to Reflect

• End of a long session (2+ hours)
• After completing a significant feature
• After a difficult debugging session
• Before handing off to another agent or session
• When the user asks "what did we learn?"

Related Skills

• field-notes:write — Reflection writes its own journal entry
• field-notes:summary — Broader pattern analysis across sessions
• field-notes:read — Review raw entries
• zenflow:docs — Act on documentation gaps found during reflection