Decision Journal Skill

Memory is a defense attorney: after the outcome arrives, everyone remembers having known it all along, and the reasoning that actually drove the choice is quietly rewritten. A decision journal defeats that — the reasoning gets pre-registered before reality votes, so the review can ask the only question that improves judgment: was the process good, given what was knowable then? Good decisions lose sometimes; bad ones win sometimes; only the written record can tell you which you're making. This is the library's 600th skill because it's the one all the others compound through.

What This Skill Produces

• The entry — situation, the real options, the choice, the reasoning, explicit probabilities, and the pre-registered "I'm wrong if…" markers
• The review trigger — a date and the observable that will have resolved by then
• The outcome review — process vs. luck separated, the delta between expected and actual, and the transferable lesson
• The pattern read — across entries: the recurring biases this specific person's journal reveals

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The decision — what's actually being chosen, and by when; "should I…" questions get reframed into the options actually on the table
• The honest state — what's known, what's guessed, how they feel (mood is data: tired-angry-rushed decisions deserve their own flag in the entry)
• For reviews: the original entry and what actually happened — the review is against the entry, never against memory

Framework: The Pre-Registration Rules

1. Write the base case and the alternatives, fairly: the entry states each real option with its strongest case — a journal of straw men reviews into nothing. "Do nothing" is always listed; it's the option most decisions are actually competing against.
2. Probabilities, in numbers: "I think this works" becomes "70% this reaches X by [date]." Numbers feel false and are — but a written 70% can be scored later, and "probably" cannot. Calibration only ever comes from this discomfort.
3. "I'm wrong if [observable] by [date]" — written now, while it's cheap. This is the line that makes the future review honest and the mid-course correction possible without ego litigation.