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keep-the-why

keep-the-why is a plugin for Claude Code from oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why. Its manifest loads nothing; the 1 skill it bundles cost 128 tokens per session together, scanned A, original, MIT.

A plugin for preserving the reasoning behind a codebase, including important decisions, rejected options, workarounds, and lessons from incidents.

In plain words
What is it for?
Useful for recording design decisions, explaining unusual code, documenting workarounds, helping new contributors understand a project, and retaining lessons from past problems.
Why use it?
Code usually shows what a system does but not why it was built that way, making maintenance and onboarding harder.

Plugin for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: a Claude Code plugin manifest.

not rated 234repo +1 changed 16d ago A scan tokens not measured original MIT

Good fit Useful for recording design decisions, explaining unusual code, documenting workarounds, helping new contributors understand a project, and retaining lessons from past problems.

Compare 6 plugins from other repositories ↓
Install in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why
/plugin install keep-the-why
View source ↗ oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why keepthewhy.com
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for keep-the-why

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for keep-the-why

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/plugins/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why/keep-the-why.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session not measured What this adds to a session before it is invoked.
When invoked not measured The manifest loads nothing itself; its 1 skill cost 128 tokens a session between them.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Security

Grade A, and why

keep-the-why scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 16d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude-plugin/plugin.json · 21 lines

What it actually says

{
  "name": "keep-the-why",
  "version": "0.20.3",
  "description": "Project memory for coding agents and humans: the reasoning behind a codebase as Markdown in the repo, versioned by Git, so nothing rejected is proposed twice.",
  "author": {
    "name": "Oliver Zehentleitner",
    "url": "https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner"
  },
  "homepage": "https://keepthewhy.com",
  "repository": "https://github.com/oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why.git",
  "license": "MIT",
  "keywords": [
    "documentation",
    "context",
    "decision-log",
    "knowledge-management",
    "onboarding",
    "agents"
  ]
}
Contents

What it installs

The manifest is a name and a version. 1 skill travel with it, and installing the plugin installs all of them — 128 tokens a session between them. Each is measured on its own page, and each can be installed alone.

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside plugin.json in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 16d ago Changed 4cf727bd38b2
  2. 25d ago Changed 7fcfbcb5877b
  3. 26d ago Changed f2a96faa36f8
  4. 1mo ago Changed 84ae176f1f42
  5. 1mo ago Changed 1db928e1c591
  6. 1mo ago Changed 883121ebf6cd
  7. 1mo ago Changed ec1071e9a0ab
  8. 1mo ago Changed 082f3e75071c
  9. 1mo ago Changed b040ec6e4e3a
  10. 1mo ago First seen · 21 lines scan A 1e40c6965459

Subscribe to this mod's changes

keep-the-why is a plugin published in the GitHub repository oliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-why (234 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. Its token cost is not measured: this kind of file is read by the harness, not the model. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Memory and contextagent-skillsai-agentsarchitecture-decision-recordscontext-engineeringdeveloper-toolsdocumentation
Related

keep-the-why compared with plugins from other repositories

keep-the-why next to 6 plugins from other repositories
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keep-the-whyoliver-zehentleitner/keep-the-whyPlugin234yesterdayMITA—Claude Code
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titen-memoryRamaAditya49/titenPlugin16yesterdayApache-2.0A—Claude Code
axme-codeAxmeAI/axme-codePlugin144d agoMITA—Claude Code
halomemhalofyai/halofyPlugin3193d agoAGPL-3.0A—Claude Code
memory-toolkitIlyaGorsky/memory-toolkitPlugin135d agoMITA—Claude Code
atomicmemoryatomicstrata/atomicmemoryPlugin439yesterdaynoneA—Claude Code