chronicle

A persistent project history file, usually stored as `docs/chronicle.md`, that records important architectural decisions and how the codebase evolved. It summarizes the meaning of changes rather than listing every commit detail.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to initialize or update a project chronicle, summarize git history at a high level, and preserve context about architecture, workflows, and conventions.
Why use it?
It gives future work a durable explanation of why the project is shaped as it is. Incremental updates avoid rebuilding the history summary from scratch each time.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nrdxp/predicate/chronicle
Any agent
npx skills add nrdxp/predicate --skill chronicle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nrdxp/predicate

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 70 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 733 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00070 $0.00733
Opus 5 $0.00035 $0.00367
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00147
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00073

Measured 2d ago against content hash add733f658a6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

chronicle 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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/update_chronicle.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

skills/chronicle/SKILL.md · 68 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 68 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Chronicle Workflow

A structured approach to maintaining a high-level, conceptual project chronicle (docs/chronicle.md). This chronicle serves as a persistent decision record, mapping the evolution of the codebase's architecture, workflows, and conventions to optimize agent context and human understanding.


Purpose

Standard git logs are either too detailed or too fragmented to provide deep architectural context. The Chronicle Workflow maintains an incremental, high-level chronicle file in the repository. Because it uses a commit cutoff marker in its frontmatter, it can be updated cheaply and incrementally over time, serving as a durable project history journal.


Execution Protocol

To update or initialize the chronicle, follow these steps:

1. Prepare Pending Logs

Run the helper script in prepare mode:

python3 skills/chronicle/scripts/update_chronicle.py --prepare

If the chronicle is already up to date, the script will output: Chronicle is already up to date with HEAD. and you may exit.

Otherwise, it will output a batch of up to 50 commits (from oldest to newest) along with changed files. Note the TARGET_END_SHA printed at the end of the output — you pass it back to the write step so the recorded range is bound to exactly the commits you summarized (immune to HEAD moving in between).

2. Group and Summarize

Using your LLM reasoning, analyze the batch output. Group the commits into conceptual themes rather than listing them raw. Focus on why changes were made, what design decisions were reached, and major milestones.

Organize the summary into the following categories where relevant:

  • Architectural Shift / Design Decisions: Major structural changes, folder reorganizations, and key trade-offs.
  • Workflow & Rulesets: Updates to workflows, rulesets, and agent configurations.
  • Features & Implementation: Core user-facing features and implementations.
  • Infrastructure & Quality: CI, tooling, linting, and test configurations.
  • Documentation: Significant documentation changes (beyond minor typos).

Read the full file on GitHub · 68 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md 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. 2d ago First seen · 68 lines · 70 tokens per session scan A add733f658a6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

chronicle is a skill published in the GitHub repository nrdxp/predicate (10 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 70 tokens to every session and 733 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. 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 2026-08-31.

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