playbook-observe

Mines session transcripts and task feedback into immutable reflection observations in observations.yaml.

Updated Apr 17, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/mistakenot/skills --skill playbook-observe-mistakenot
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: playbook-observe
Source: https://github.com/mistakenot/skills/tree/main/plugins/reflection/skills/playbook-observe
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/mistakenot/skills --skill playbook-observe-mistakenot

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill includes scripts (resource) and references (resource) components.

What problem does it solve? Completed task runs contain valuable lessons buried in session transcripts and feedback files, but without a systematic process they are never captured. This Skill mines those sources and records immutable, time-ordered observations into docs/reflection/observations.yaml, with an ingestion ledger that prevents re-processing. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Transcript and feedback mining: Discovers candidate sessions via auto search and detects changed docs/tasks/*/feedback.md files by SHA-256 hash, then dispatches sub-agents to extract structured observations. - Immutable, time-ordered records: Mints lexically time-ordered IDs via the bundled reflect.py helper and appends observations in place with yq, scaling to thousands of records without loading whole files into context. - Ingestion ledger: Tracks processed session IDs and feedback content hashes so re-runs are incremental and idempotent. - Use Case: After finishing several tasks, run the observe stage to gather lessons from all recent sessions and feedback files into observations.yaml, then hand off to playbook-refine to distil them into reusable rules. ## Quick Start Ask the agent to mine recent task sessions and feedback files for new reflection observations and append them to docs/reflection/observations.yaml.

Frequently Asked Questions about playbook-observe

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I mine lessons from completed AI agent task sessions?▼

Run the observe stage, which discovers candidate sessions via auto search and changed feedback.md files by content hash, then dispatches sub-agents to extract structured observations. Accepted observations are appended to docs/reflection/observations.yaml with time-ordered IDs.

What is the difference between an observation and a rule in the reflection playbook?▼

An observation is immutable point-in-time evidence from a specific task or session that may justify changing guidance. A rule is the current deduplicated guidance distilled from observations by the separate playbook-refine stage.

Does playbook-observe mine git history or pull requests?▼

No. Git and PR mining stays with the learning-diary skill. This skill mines only task session transcripts via auto search and docs/tasks/*/feedback.md files, treating both sources from the same task as one task-level instance.

How does the skill avoid re-processing sessions it already mined?▼

It maintains an ingestion ledger inside observations.yaml recording processed session IDs and feedback file content hashes. Sessions are processed once, and feedback files are re-processed only when their SHA-256 hash changes.

What tools are required to run the reflection observe stage?▼

It requires python3 with the bundled reflect.py helper, yq (mikefarah), auto search, and sha256sum. Python with pyyaml works as a slower fallback if yq is unavailable, and duckdb is only needed by the separate refine stage.

Why must observation IDs come from the reflect.py helper?▼

IDs must be immutable and lexically time-ordered, combining a microsecond UTC timestamp with a monotonic per-process counter. Hand-rolled date or random-suffix IDs can sort incorrectly, breaking cursor-based incremental processing.