lab-notebook

Lab Notebook

Establish mandatory, structured experiment logging for a project. Once initialized, every system modification, benchmark, configuration change, build attempt, and debugging step MUST be logged in LAB_NOTEBOOK.md — no exceptions.

The notebook combines three proven documentation patterns:

• Scientific lab notebook — hypothesis-driven entries with environment context and reproducibility
• Architecture Decision Records — decisions with alternatives considered and lifecycle tracking
• Incident postmortem — blameless failure analysis, action items, and "what went well"

Input

Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Supported arguments:

• init — Full initialization: discover prior work, create LAB_NOTEBOOK.md, inject CLAUDE.md rules
• entry "title" — Add a new numbered entry to an existing notebook
• status — Show notebook health: entries, staleness, open action items, active decisions
• rotate — Archive the oldest experiment entries to docs/archive/ once the log grows large, keeping the living sections and recent entries. Preserves every decision (a move, never a delete).
• No arguments — Same as init if no notebook exists, same as status if one does

Phase 0: Self-Invocation Confirmation

This skill can be model-invoked, and every mode except status writes to the project — init creates LAB_NOTEBOOK.md and injects binding rules into CLAUDE.md; entry appends; rotate moves entries into docs/archive/. None of that may happen unasked.

If you are invoking this skill on your own initiative — because the work looks experimental, a benchmark is starting, or the user said something like "I keep losing track of what I tried" — rather than the user typing /lab-notebook, confirm first with AskUserQuestion:

{
  "questions": [
    {
      "question": "Set up a lab notebook for this project?",
      "header": "Notebook",
      "multiSelect": false,
      "options": [
        {
          "label": "Yes, initialize it",
          "description": "Creates LAB_NOTEBOOK.md and adds logging rules to CLAUDE.md that make an entry a precondition for every system-modifying action"
        },
        {
          "label": "No, not now",
          "description": "Nothing is written; you can run /lab-notebook yourself at any time"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}