# Retrospect

> Periodically review recent vault work — edits, the activity log, and feedback — and propose durable refinements: corrections to promote into SCHEMA.md, knowledge to capture, conventions to add or prune.

- **Type:** Skill
- **Install:** `agentstack add skill-chicken-noodle-chris-tome-retrospect`
- **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior
- **Seller:** [chicken-noodle-chris](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/chicken-noodle-chris)
- **Installs:** 0
- **Category:** [Security](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/security)
- **Latest version:** 0.1.0
- **License:** MIT
- **Upstream author:** [chicken-noodle-chris](https://github.com/chicken-noodle-chris)
- **Source:** https://github.com/chicken-noodle-chris/tome/tree/main/skills/retrospect

## Install

```sh
agentstack add skill-chicken-noodle-chris-tome-retrospect
```

Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent.

## About

Optional input: a review window ("since May") or a focus ("just the vaulty work"). Default to the span since the last retrospect.

**Retrospect is the co-evolve-with-the-user step made a ritual.** `wiki/SCHEMA.md` declares itself "co-evolved with the user" — extended when a recurring pattern in your edits or feedback isn't captured yet, pruned when a rule stops fitting. Retrospect is the scheduled pass that delivers on that promise: look back over recent work, decide what the vault's conventions and capture habits should learn from it, and propose those changes for approval.

Hold the line against two neighbours — if a finding belongs to them, hand it off and move on:
- **lint** (`tome lint`) checks page *health*: broken links, missing frontmatter, orphans, drift, size caps. Mechanical correctness of pages that already exist.
- **gap-finding** asks *what knowledge is missing*: topics the wiki should cover but doesn't.
- **retrospect** asks *what the way-we-work should learn*: it refines the conventions and the capture process itself, not the pages. "This link is broken" → lint. "We keep forgetting to record decisions, so SCHEMA should require it" → yours.

Conventions live in **`wiki/SCHEMA.md` — the authority**; `scripts/tome.py` (`tome help`)
enforces the mechanics. `tome` is on PATH in Bash (the plugin's SessionStart hook puts it
there) — just run `tome `; if it's ever not found, fall back to `python
"$TOME_PLUGIN_ROOT/scripts/tome.py" `. It resolves which vault to act on via
`--vault` / walking up from cwd / `VAULT_ROOT`. There is **one gate**: the user approves
the proposed refinements before anything is written.

1. **Prime, and set the window.** Run `tome sync` to pull, then `tome prime --full`
   (skip if already primed this session). Find the last retrospect log line with
   `grep -n "^## \[.*\] retrospect "
   wiki/log.md | tail -1` — its date is the window start; none found → default to the
   last ~30 days.

2. **Gather the evidence across the window.** Pull from every source available, then read for *patterns*, not one-offs:
   - **Edits** — the vault repo root, resolved the same way `tome` itself does (walk-up from cwd, else `$VAULT_ROOT`
     if set, else walk up from cwd looking for `conventions.toml`). `git -C ""
     log --since= --stat` for what changed and `git -C "" log
     --since= -p -- wiki/` for how. Churn, reversals, and the same fix made
     by hand twice are the signal.
   - **Activity** — the `wiki/log.md` entries since the window start: the arc of recent work.
   - **Inbox** — `ls inbox/` (with each file's age) for everything the `capture` skill has
     dropped since the last triage. Retrospect is the inbox's owner: nothing else drains it.
   - **Feedback** — your project memory store (its `MEMORY.md` index plus the `feedback`- and `project`-type files): the corrections and preferences you've already been told. Richest source.
   - **Sessions** — if your harness exposes session-history tools (e.g. `list_sessions`, `search_session_transcripts`), mine recent transcripts for corrections the user gave in conversation that never reached SCHEMA or a memory.

3. **Review flagged pages.** Run `tome lint` and pull out every `STALE` finding — a page whose inbound-link count and days-since-`updated:` both cleared conventions.toml's `[staleness]` thresholds (well-linked *and* old, together). Check each one against reality: if it's drifted, fix it with a surgical edit (its `updated:` lands naturally from that); if it's still accurate, affirm it by re-running `tome describe  ""` — no dedicated touch-only command exists, and this keeps the write flowing through tome instead of a hand-edited frontmatter field. Every flagged page gets one of the two; none silently skipped. No `[staleness]` section, or no findings: skip this step, nothing to review.

4. **Derive the refinements.** Sort what recurs into four kinds; discard one-offs (corrected once is noise, twice is a pattern):
   - **Promote a recurring correction into `wiki/SCHEMA.md`** — the user keeps steering the same way and SCHEMA is silent on it. Draft the convention.
   - **Capture missed knowledge** — something durable surfaced in the work but was never filed. Propose the page (or memory) and where it lands.
   - **Add or prune a convention** — a rule observed practice now contradicts, or one nothing has used. Propose the edit or the deletion.
   - **Route each inbox item** — for every file gathered in step 2, propose which page it becomes or extends (new page, or a surgical edit to an existing one), or propose deletion if it's gone stale. Every inbox item needs a proposal here, even a trivial one — none get silently skipped.
   Anything that's really lint or gap-finding: route it there, don't fix it here.

5. **Present the proposals — the one gate.** Show each refinement as a concrete change: the exact SCHEMA wording, the page to create, the line to cut, the inbox item's destination — grouped by kind, each with the evidence that earns it. Recommend; don't dump every candidate. Iterate in place until the user approves, and drop what they reject.

   **Running unattended** (a scheduled trigger, no live user to approve): skip the live gate. Instead, drop each derived proposal — including step 3's flagged-page fixes if they need judgment rather than a mechanical `updated:` bump — as its own `tome inbox "..."` capture describing the proposed change and its evidence, and stop; the next live retrospect's step 2 picks these up as ordinary inbox items and step 4 routes them from there. Never apply a SCHEMA edit, page rewrite, or convention change without a live approval.

6. **Apply, log, and sync.** Make the approved edits. For approved inbox routings: create or
   extend the destination page (`tome new` / a surgical edit, same discipline as `ingest`
   step 7), then delete the inbox file once its content has landed — an inbox item is only
   removed after its routing lands, never before. `tome log retrospect ""` naming
   the window reviewed and what changed — **this entry is the state store**; the next run
   reads its date. `tome sync -m "..."` — no separate commit approval needed; step 5's
   approval already covered the content. Running unattended: `tome log retrospect
   " (unattended — proposals filed to inbox)"` then `tome sync`, since step 5's
   inbox captures are the only writes that happened.

## Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

- **Author:** [chicken-noodle-chris](https://github.com/chicken-noodle-chris)
- **Source:** [chicken-noodle-chris/tome](https://github.com/chicken-noodle-chris/tome)
- **License:** MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.

## Pricing

- **Free** — Free

## Security capabilities

Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access:

- **Network access:** no
- **Filesystem access:** no
- **Shell / process execution:** no
- **Environment & secrets:** no
- **Dynamic code execution:** no

*"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.*


## Versions

- **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source.

## Links

- Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/skill-chicken-noodle-chris-tome-retrospect
- Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/chicken-noodle-chris
- Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse

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