“Captain’s Log, Stardate 41153.7”

There’s something iconic about the way Captain Jean-Luc Picard begins his entries in Star Trek. I fondly remember it. As a developer, I constantly make decisions, either with or without the help of llms:

• Why did I choose this solution?
• What was the goal I wanted to achieve?
• What alternatives did I consider?
• What bugs did I encounter and how were they resolved?
• Which decision did I make?

However, six months later, you’re staring at code wondering, “What was I (and my LLM) thinking?” 🤭

I’ve been a fan of pi.dev and inspired by Picard’s meticulous record-keeping, Pi itself built a pi.dev extension called pi-captains-log that brings this Star Trek tradition into your development workflow.

What It Does

The pi-captains-log extension allows you to:

• Record decisions as you work, with automatic timestamps
• Integrate with ask_user for user inputs
• Maintain continuity across development sessions
• Search past entries by keyword or date range

How It Works

The extension integrates seamlessly into your workflow. A write_captains_log and read_captains_log is all you need. If you’re using pi.dev and want to bring a bit of Starfleet discipline to your development workflow:

1. Check out the extension: github.com/jplattel/pi-captains-log
2. Install it following the README instructions
3. It’ll start keeping your own captain’s log in .captains-log

Live long and prosper, and may your logs be ever detailed. 🖖

PS: Not sure if I’ll publish this one on NPM, but feel free to do so if you have any improvements!