Skill: Craft Observation

"The best time to capture a learning is when it happens."

When

Record an observation when:

• A pattern emerges
• A problem is solved (not just fixed — understood)
• Something unexpected happens
• A key insight crystallizes

Where it goes

Branch memory is a draft, never the home. observations/NNN-topic.md is where this skill has always written, and most repositories ignore that directory — so the note lives on one laptop, for one account, on one checkout.

A note nobody can read later was not a learning. Write it where it survives:

a run's own record	while Floor is installed. It outlives the session and the tree
a commit message	otherwise. Worth remembering is worth a commit
the repository's own place for one	when it states one. That statement outranks this table

Draft here, land it there, in the same pass. A draft left behind is the failure this skill kept producing.

The Standard

1. Sequence: Increment NNN from last observation.
2. Brevity: Capture the essence. One page max.
3. Actionable: Future you should be able to act on it.

The Protocol

1. Identify type: Pattern, problem, solution, or discovery?
2. Describe what: What actually happened?
3. Capture context: What were you doing?
4. Extract learning: What's the takeaway?
5. Save: draft at observations/NNN-topic.md, then land it where it survives.

The Anti-Patterns

Don't	Do	Why
Wait until later	Capture now	Context fades fast
Over-explain	Distill essence	Signal over noise
Skip the learning	State the takeaway	That's the whole point

Template

See templates/observation.md.

Integration

Observations are reference material, not auto-loaded. Search when relevant context arises.