Coming back is the hard part
You know how to build the thing. What you lose is the thread: what you decided, what you were waiting on, and why you dropped the approach that looked right in month two.
days away
- Callout 1.Blocked 5 months: spindle encoder
- Callout 2.Last session July 21: squared the column
- Callout 3.Reversed: dropped the printed motor mounts
The screen that answers where you were
Open a project after a month away. Before you navigate anywhere, it tells you what is open, what you last did, and what you already decided.
- Callout 1.Last touched July 21
- Callout 2.2 open
- Callout 3.Latest decision: dropped the printed motor mounts
Open
- Spindle encoderBlocked 5 months
Waiting on Supplier has not shipped. No tracking, two emails unanswered.
- Ballscrew end bearingsBlocked 2 months
Waiting on Back ordered, no date given.
Decided
- May 3
Steppers, not servos. Closed loop cost three times as much for rigidity this table does not have.
- September 3
LinuxCNC over Mach3. Mach3 wants a parallel port and the mini PC does not have one.
- November 20
Dropped the printed motor mounts. PLA crept under belt tension and Z lost 0.2mm across a week.
The record writes itself
Nobody keeps a project journal for two years. So the log is not a second job: closing a piece of work asks what closed it, and that answer is the record.
- Callout 1.Finish something.
- Callout 2.Say what finished it, in one line.
- Callout 3.That line is attached to the work permanently, and it is what you read when you come back.
The line that closed it
July 21
Squared the column. Tramming holds within 0.02mm across 150mm.
Two years of this is a document nobody sat down to write.
Specimen / as of 2026-08-13What this is not
Not a task manager.
Open items matter, but a list of them is not a record.
Not a wiki.
Documents live here, but the log is what you actually come back for.
No streaks, no badges, no celebration of starting.
Nothing here rewards you for showing up.
No reminders.
It waits. When you come back, it tells you what changed while you were gone.
Not for habits or fitness.
Those want adherence tracking, which is a different product.
The part that reads it back to you
Shipping today
Projects, the log, nested work items with real states including blocked and a wake date, documents, and the resume view. Private to you.
Next
An agent grounded in your own repository: recall and synthesis over your decisions and dead ends, not generic advice. It is not built yet.
Which is the reason to start now. The agent is only worth having if there is a record for it to read, and that record takes months to accumulate. Starting today is what makes it useful later.
Specimen / as of 2026-08-13Start the record
One project, private, free while it is early. If you are in the middle of something long, the useful moment to begin was a year ago. Second best is today.
Early access. What exists today is described in plate 04, exactly.