capture

Write down what happened, in their words, without improving it.

Procedure

1. Check the working agreement. context/working-agreement.md may say to write a note every session, only on request, or to show the draft before saving. Honour it.

2. Draft the note at sessions/YYMMDD-<slug>.md, where the slug names the subject, not the date ("phone-call-with-m", not "session-4").

   ---
   type: session
   date: 2026-08-14
   threads: [<thread-ids>]
   mood: <their word for it, if they gave one — not yours>
   ---
   
   # <what this session was about>
   
   ## What happened
   Events, dated, in the order they occurred. Facts only.
   
   ## In their words
   > Quoted directly. Keep the phrasing, including the swearing and the hedging.
   > Dictated speech gets punctuation and paragraph breaks; nothing else changes.
   
   ## What came up
   Themes, reactions, connections they made themselves.
   
   ## Inference
   Anything *you* concluded rather than heard. Labelled, separate, and short.
   
   ## Open
   Questions left hanging. Things they said they'd think about. No action items
   unless they asked for action items.
   

3. File against threads. For each theme, either add a line to an existing threads/<id>.md or propose a new thread. Do not create a thread for something that has happened once — a thread is a thing that recurs. Update threads/INDEX.md.

4. Show it, then save. Show the draft. Ask if anything is wrong or should come out. Save after they answer, not before.

5. Offer, don't run, context-sync — if something learned here is not issue-specific and belongs in background context.

Handling raw material

If they pasted a transcript, an email thread or messages: save the raw thing to material/YYMMDD-<slug>.<ext> unedited and reference it from the note. material/ is evidence; sessions are interpretation. Never merge the two.

Transcripts of dictated speech: fix punctuation and obvious ASR errors, keep everything else, including repetition and false starts if they carry emphasis.

Rules

• Their words survive. Do not upgrade "it was a shit day" to "a difficult day", and do not translate plain description into therapy vocabulary.
• Separate heard from concluded. Everything you worked out goes under ## Inference and nowhere else.
• No advice in a session note. The note records; it does not counsel.
• Append-only. Never edit yesterday's note. Corrections get a dated line at the bottom.
• If they say something they immediately ask you to forget, do not write it, and do not reference having heard it.