Quick Note Capture

Quick capture for thoughts, observations, or ideas during a work session.

When to Use

• When you have a quick thought you don't want to lose
• Observations during an experiment or analysis
• Ideas that pop up while working on something else
• 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

1. Parse Input

Extract the note text from everything after /note .

2. 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.

4. 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

• No confirmation dialogs
• No follow-up questions
• Minimal output
• 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:

1. Preserved in the Notes section
2. Used to help infer session focus
3. 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

• wrap-up - Integrates notes into full daily summary
• task - For action items (use instead of /note for todos)