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Agent skill

Daily Journal

by huytieu in huytieu/COG-second-brain

A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself.

MITAuto-check passedKnowledge Management

Install Daily Journal

skills CLI
$ npx skills add huytieu/COG-second-brain --skill daily-journal -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install huytieu/COG-second-brain daily-journal --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/huytieu/COG-second-brain.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/daily-journal .claude/skills/daily-journal && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
daily-journal
GitHub stars
1.3k
Token cost
~1.3k tokens
SKILL.md length
603 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
37
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself.

  • Works in 2 steps: log (default, mostly invoked implicitly)… → reflect — read the day's log (+ recent…
  • You run /daily-journal
  • SKILL.md covers Purpose, Storage, When to log (procedure for the… and Entry format, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Daily Journal is an agent skill from huytieu/COG-second-brain. A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself. Append short entries after meaningful work (what was done, what you focused on, artifacts touched) to 01-daily/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Run a guided reflection at night or in the morning. Use when you run /daily-journal, say "log this to my journal", "add to today's journal", "reflect on today/yesterday", or when finishing a meaningful chunk of work in any session.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Knowledge Management, covering Journaling and reflection. The repository describes itself as: Self-evolving second brain with 35 AI skills, 10 agents, and people CRM. Closed-loop harness: a V-model verification lifecycle where the worker never grades its own homework… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • You run /daily-journal
  • Say log this to my journal
  • Add to todays journal
  • Reflect on today/yesterday

Example prompts

  • “log this to my journal”
  • “add to today”
  • “reflect on today/yesterday”
  • “/daily-journal”

Workflow steps

2 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. log (default, mostly invoked implicitly) — append a short entry to today's journal.
  2. reflect — read the day's log (+ recent days) and run a guided reflection with you.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 36ac9d7. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Daily Journal loads about 1.3k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 119 tokens; SKILL.md has 603 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~119
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from huytieu/COG-second-brain at commit 36ac9d7, republished under its MIT licence (© huytieu). 603 words, ~1,275 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/daily-journal/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
daily-journal
description
A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself. Append short entries after meaningful work (what was done, what you focused on, artifacts touched) to 01-daily/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Run a guided reflection at night or in the morning. Use when you run /daily-journal, say "log this to my journal", "add to today's journal", "reflect on today/yesterday", or when finishing a meaningful chunk of work in any session.

Daily Journal

Purpose

Keep an automatic, passive journal of your workdays so you don't have to write one. Claude logs what got done as it happens; you optionally run a reflection later. This is distinct from /weekly-checkin (which is a manual reflection where you supply the input) — here Claude is the author and the log accrues in the background.

Two modes:

  1. log (default, mostly invoked implicitly) — append a short entry to today's journal.
  2. reflect — read the day's log (+ recent days) and run a guided reflection with you.

Storage

  • One file per day: 01-daily/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md (use date +%F for today's date; never guess).
  • Create the file from the template below on the first entry of the day.
  • Append only — never rewrite earlier entries. Newest entries go at the bottom of the Log section.

When to log (procedure for the always-apply trigger)

The trigger itself lives in CLAUDE.md § Daily Journal (ALWAYS APPLY), because a skill body is lazily loaded and cannot fire itself. This section is the procedure that trigger runs.

After finishing a meaningful unit of work, append one entry. Meaningful = would matter to future-you or shows how the day was spent. Examples:

  • Shipped/committed something, published a note/brief/slide, filed or moved tracker issues (Linear/Jira/GitHub).
  • Made a decision, changed direction, or hit a notable blocker.
  • Produced a deliverable file (spec, plan, analysis, report).
  • A substantive research/synthesis session that produced an artifact.

Do NOT log: trivial reads, one-line lookups, mid-task scratch work, this journal's own writes, or anything you asked to keep out. When in doubt, one concise line is better than none. Do not interrupt the flow to announce logging — just append and carry on.

Entry format

Append under the ## Log section:

### HH:MM — <short title of what got done>
- **Focus:** <the thread/project this served, e.g. a product line, a squad, the blog>
- **Did:** <1-3 bullets, concrete, past tense>
- **Artifacts:** <files/PRs/links touched, or "—">
- **Signal:** <optional: decision made, blocker hit, mood/energy if you mentioned it, or omit>

Keep it tight. Times use 24h local (date +%H:%M). Match memory/CLAUDE.md conventions: no em-dashes, your product naming rules, no self-authored next-steps (only record what actually happened or what you explicitly said).

Daily file template (first entry of the day)

markdown
---
date: YYYY-MM-DD
type: journal
---

# Journal — YYYY-MM-DD (Weekday)

> Auto-kept by Claude. Reflection appended below when you run it.

## Focus of the day
_Inferred from entries; leave blank until there's signal._

## Log

## Reflection
_Empty until you run `/daily-journal reflect`._
Show full SKILL.md (283 more words)Show less

Mode: reflect

Triggered by /daily-journal reflect [today|yesterday|YYYY-MM-DD] (default: today), or when you say "reflect on today/yesterday" or "let's do the journal".

  1. Read the target day's journal file. If it doesn't exist or the Log is thin, say so and offer to reconstruct from other signals (today's brief in 01-daily/briefs/, recent commits, braindumps) before proceeding — but do NOT fabricate.
  2. Read the previous 2-3 journal files for continuity (recurring threads, carried-over blockers).
  3. Summarize the day back to you in a few lines: main focus, what shipped, what stalled. Then ask 2-4 light reflection questions adapted to what the log shows (e.g. "The eval work ate the afternoon — did it move?" rather than generic prompts). Keep it conversational, low-friction; this is meant to be a 2-minute thing at night or in the morning.
  4. Write your answers + a short synthesis into the ## Reflection section of that day's file. Fill in ## Focus of the day if still blank.
  5. If the reflection surfaces a durable fact (a decision, a changed priority, a lesson), also write/update the relevant 05-knowledge/ note or a memory per the Brain-First protocol — the journal is ephemeral daily context, not the durable store.

Weekly roll-up (optional)

If you ask for a "week in review" or on a weekly reflection, read the last 7 journal files and synthesize themes into 01-daily/weekly/ (match the existing naming there). Do not auto-run this.

Guardrails

  • Single-file discipline: everything for a day lives in that one journal file. Never split into per-entry files.
  • Privacy: personal/1:1 content stays in the journal only; never leaks into team-facing briefs.
  • Never publish the journal anywhere external.
  • This is your private log. Write plainly and honestly; if the day stalled, say so.

© huytieu, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/daily-journal of huytieu/COG-second-brain.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 36ac9d7

Compare with similar skills

Daily Journal next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Daily Journal compared with similar skills
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Daily Journal this skillhuytieu/COG-second-brain1.3k—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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Munger Perspectivealchaincyf/munger-skill3791 repos~3.7kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
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Em Grid Scorermanager-dot-dev/manager-skills114—~5.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Digital Brainforyourhealth111-pixel/Vibe-Skills3.6k—~1.7kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0

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Categories

Questions about Daily Journal

What does Daily Journal do?

A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself. Daily Journal is an agent skill from huytieu/COG-second-brain. A passive daily work journal that Claude keeps FOR you so you never have to write it yourself.

When should I use Daily Journal?

Daily Journal fits situations like: you run /daily-journal; say log this to my journal; add to todays journal; reflect on today/yesterday.

How do I install Daily Journal in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add huytieu/COG-second-brain --skill daily-journal -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/daily-journal in huytieu/COG-second-brain) into .claude/skills/daily-journal in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Daily Journal in Codex?

Run `npx skills add huytieu/COG-second-brain --skill daily-journal -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/daily-journal in huytieu/COG-second-brain) into .agents/skills/daily-journal in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Daily Journal in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add huytieu/COG-second-brain --skill daily-journal -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/daily-journal, .gemini/skills/daily-journal, .github/skills/daily-journal and .opencode/skills/daily-journal in your project.

What does Daily Journal need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Daily Journal is instructions for the agent only.

Does Daily Journal access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Daily Journal safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Daily Journal use?

Daily Journal is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Daily Journal use?

About 1.3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.1k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Daily Journal?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Daily Journal: LLM Wiki (lewislulu/llm-wiki-skill, 655 stars), Munger Perspective (alchaincyf/munger-skill, 379 stars), Letterboxd Diary (joe-bell/skills, 211 stars) and Em Grid Scorer (manager-dot-dev/manager-skills, 114 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Daily Journal?

huytieu (a GitHub user) maintains it in huytieu/COG-second-brain, which has 1,268 GitHub stars. The repository holds 37 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 2, 2026.

Source: huytieu/COG-second-brain on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.