Quick Note Capture
Quick capture for thoughts, observations, or ideas during a work session.
When to Use
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When you have a quick thought you don't want to lose
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Observations during an experiment or analysis
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Ideas that pop up while working on something else
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Anything you want logged but don't want to context-switch for
Syntax
/note [your thought here]
Examples:
/note Realized the preprocessing step might be dropping too many samples /note Meeting with PI moved to Thursday /note Try using rolling average instead of mean for smoothing /note The cluster seems slower today - check job queue
Execution Steps
- Parse Input
Extract the note text from everything after /note .
- Check for Today's Entry
Look in .research/logs/activity.md for an entry matching today's date:
- Pattern: ## YYYY-MM-DD or ## [YYYY-MM-DD]
3a. If Today's Entry Exists
Append the note to the existing entry's Notes section:
2024-12-02
Session focus: [existing content]
Notes:
- [existing notes]
- [HH:MM] [New note text] ← ADD HERE
If no Notes section exists in today's entry, add one:
Notes:
- [HH:MM] [Note text]
3b. If No Entry for Today
Create a minimal placeholder entry that /wrap_up will expand later:
[YYYY-MM-DD]
Session focus: [To be filled by /wrap_up]
Notes:
- [HH:MM] [Note text]
Prepend this to activity.md after the templates section.
- Confirm (Brief)
Single-line confirmation to minimize disruption:
📝 Noted.
Or if it created a new day entry:
📝 Noted. (Started today's entry - run /wrap_up later to complete it)
Behavior Notes
Speed is Priority
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No confirmation dialogs
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No follow-up questions
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Minimal output
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Get the user back to work immediately
Timestamp Format
Use 24-hour time in user's local timezone:
- [14:32] Realized the threshold is too aggressive
- [15:45] PI suggested trying hierarchical clustering
Multiple Notes Same Day
Each note appends to the Notes section:
Notes:
- [09:15] Started fresh after coffee
- [11:30] The new approach is working better
- [14:22] Hit a wall with memory usage
- [16:45] Fixed it - was loading full dataset unnecessarily
Integration with /wrap_up
When user runs /wrap_up , these notes are:
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Preserved in the Notes section
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Used to help infer session focus
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May inform "Decisions made" if they mention choices
Edge Cases
Empty note
/note
Response:
What did you want to note? Usage: /note [your thought]
Very long note
Accept it - the user knows what they need to capture. Don't truncate.
Note looks like a task
If the note contains action words like "TODO", "need to", "should", "must":
📝 Noted. (This sounds like a task - want me to add it to tasks.md too? y/n)
Only ask this for obvious task-like notes, not for observations.
Example Session
User: /note The correlation coefficient dropped after adding the new samples
RA: 📝 Noted.
[User continues working...]
User: /note Check if batch effect is causing this
RA: 📝 Noted.
[Later...]
User: /note Fixed it - needed to normalize by batch first
RA: 📝 Noted.
[End of day...]
User: /wrap_up
RA: Here's today's summary: ... Notes: - [10:23] The correlation coefficient dropped after adding the new samples - [10:45] Check if batch effect is causing this - [14:30] Fixed it - needed to normalize by batch first ...
Related Skills
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wrap-up
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Integrates notes into full daily summary
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task
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For action items (use instead of /note for todos)