Tip: Give Your Coding Agent a Numbered Journal Instead of a Memory System

doug.sh·medium signal

A practitioner pattern from doug.sh: instead of building RAG-based memory or complex retrieval, tell your coding agent to maintain numbered journal files (journal-1.md, journal-2.md) in the working directory, appending entries for every step — commands run, output observed, hypotheses tested, dead-ends hit. The agent reads the journal back before resuming work. Benefits: no infra needed, human-readable, persists across sessions, preserves failed attempts. Caveat: gitignore journals to avoid leaking command output containing secrets.