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3 hours ago
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Keep your AI coding assistant's memory alive across sessions!
Working with AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot) is amazing, but they forget everything between sessions. You waste time re-explaining:
- What you're building
- Decisions you made
- Why you chose certain approaches
- Where you left off
A Project Journal - a simple markdown file that acts as your AI's memory bank!
- 📚 Context Retention - AI remembers past decisions
- 🎯 Progress Tracking - Document what you've built
- 💭 Decision Log - Record WHY you chose things
- 🔄 Session Continuity - Pick up right where you left off
- 🤝 Team Friendly - Onboard new developers (or AIs) instantly
- Download PROJECT_JOURNAL_TEMPLATE.md
- Copy it to your project root as PROJECT_JOURNAL.md
- Fill in the sections as you work
- Update it after each session
Starting a session:
Ending a session:
That's it! Your AI now has memory! 🧠✨
The template includes sections for:
- 👥 Team & roles
- 🎯 Project overview
- 🛠️ Tech stack decisions
- ✅ Completed features
- 💡 Design rationale
- 📝 Session logs
- 🚀 Current status
- 📋 Next steps
We used this technique while building Vibe CMS - a social platform built with PHP and flat-file database. See PROJECT_JOURNAL.md for a complete real-world example!
- ✅ Save time - Stop re-explaining everything
- ✅ Better decisions - Document your reasoning
- ✅ Consistent code - AI maintains your patterns
- ✅ Easy onboarding - New contributors get up to speed fast
- ✅ Natural documentation - Your journal IS your docs
- Solo developers working with AI assistants
- Teams collaborating with AI coding tools
- Students learning to code with AI tutors
- Anyone building long-term projects with AI
- "Review the journal and suggest what to work on next"
- "Add our decision about [X] to the journal with rationale"
- "Summarize this session for the journal"
- Update frequently (after major features)
- Be specific (include file paths, snippets)
- Track WHY, not just what
- Commit journal updates with your code
Found a better way to structure this? Have improvements? PRs welcome!
This template is meant to evolve. Make it your own!
CC0 (Public Domain) - Use it however you want! No attribution required (but appreciated 💜)
Created by Damo & Cursy while building Vibe CMS.
If this helped you, give it a ⭐ and share it with fellow developers!
- Share your experience on Twitter with #AIProjectJournal
- Found this useful? Star the repo!
- Questions? Open an issue!
🌈 Happy coding with your AI partner! 🚀
