The daily work log, with a trigger this time (PENDING-155 filed)

The steward asked for a daily note in Obsidian explaining in plain terms what
we did, decisions taken, and commit references — plus significant insights and
exchanges between the parties. This is Obsidian tracker item 5, the actual goal,
unstarted since 2026-08-19 while four items of frontmatter hygiene stood in
front of it.

Two prior attempts at this exact genre were read before anything was designed,
honouring the tracker's own flag: daily-log/ (4 entries, Mar-Apr 2026) and
sessions/ (3 long-form narratives). Both died inside four weeks. Neither had a
trigger — they were written when someone remembered. So the design question was
never what the note should say. It was what makes it survive.

Answer, steward-chosen at each fork: the note lives at 01. Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md
with project work under its own H2 inside it rather than in project folders; a
SessionStart hook creates it so existence stops depending on memory; the
executor writes during the session because a wrap-only design inherits the
wrap's failure mode (2026-08-19 died unwrapped); and the wrap finalises rather
than begins.

daybook-ensure.py creates only. It will not touch an existing note — that is the
control the design turns on, and it is tested, along with a positive control
proving the no-dir report distinguishes a missing directory from a broken
function. It also reports failure loudly, because the job it sits beside spent
five months failing behind a > /dev/null 2>&1.

Not revived: the 2025 analogue template — sleep, supplements, homeopathy. Pen
and paper beat it and should keep it. That it failed is a finding, not a gap,
and this note is a different genre rather than its replacement.

PENDING-155 files the steward's idea for the jurist's side: an append-only MCP
surface writing a scratch file the executor folds in. Deliberately NOT a tool on
governance-mcp.py, whose read-only guarantee is a live AST control with a
positive control rather than a comment. A separate one-tool server leaves that
intact, and the vault note stays single-writer — the same lesson the
thinking-mirror taught this morning.

Correction carried into the record: the executor told the steward mid-session
that Claude.app has no filesystem access. False since 2026-08-08. Third instance
today of a constraint asserted from recall where the substrate was one file away.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JQKeKY9T9d95KpvHwwok8T

claude/skills/wrap-up/SKILL.md

@@ -239,6 +239,45 @@ that had nothing to do, and that is how five months of silence went unnoticed.
   path unreachable from a restricted context), say that too; the diagnosis is in
   `session-ledger-2026-04-16.md` and it is macOS Full Disk Access, not git and not rsync.
 
+### 7.5. The daily note — finalise the day's work log
+
+`01. Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md` in the vault. **A session-start hook (`daybook-ensure.py`) has already
+created it**, so this step never begins a file — it finishes one. If the note is still only the
+skeleton, that is the failure this step exists to catch: the day's work was never written down as it
+happened, and writing it all now from a compacted context is exactly the reconstruction the log is
+meant to replace.
+
+**Who it is for, and therefore how it reads.** The steward, on a day when he wants to know what we
+did without reading `git log`. **Plain language.** Explain the jargon or drop it. Short sentences.
+A reader who was not in the session must be able to follow it. This is the register the steward
+asked for on 2026-08-23 — *"relatively simple terms"* — and it is the hardest part of this step,
+because the executor's default register is dense, hedged, and written for itself.
+
+**Shape** (steward-specified 2026-08-23):
+- `## The day in short` — one paragraph. What actually happened, and why it mattered.
+- `## <Project>` — **one H2 per project touched**, H3 beneath if it needs it. Project work goes
+  under its own heading, *not* into project folders. Put commit hashes here, inline, next to what
+  they did: `→ f1c91d9`.
+- `## Decisions taken` — what was decided and *by whom*, briefly. Cross-project, so it stays global.
+- `## Insights and exchanges worth keeping` — the distinctive section, and the one most likely to be
+  skipped under time pressure. A sentence that changed how we saw the problem; a correction that
+  landed; a phrase worth keeping. **Record the jurist's contributions here too** — rulings, design
+  gates and reasoning relayed by the steward reach this session and belong in the record the same
+  way the executor's do. Claude.app cannot write to the vault itself (its MCP surface,
+  `governance-mcp.py`, is structurally read-only and audited to stay that way), so this step is
+  where its side of the exchange gets kept.
+- `## Open / next` — what is unfinished, with dates where they exist.
+
+**Accrete DURING the session; do not save it all for the wrap.** A session that dies unwrapped loses
+whatever only lived here — 2026-08-19 died exactly that way. The hook guarantees the file; only
+writing into it as the day goes guarantees the content.
+
+**Never rewrite a previous day's note.** It is a record, not a document under maintenance.
+
+⚠ **Two previous attempts at this log died inside four weeks** — `daily-log/` (4 entries) and
+`sessions/` (3), both Mar–Apr 2026, both abandoned without a note saying so. Neither had a trigger.
+If this one lapses, say so in the wrap rather than letting it fade a third time.
+
 ### 8. Output
 
 Produce a brief summary for the steward: