retro
Retro
The vault root. Resolve it once, before anything else: VAULT_ROOT from the environment, defaulting to ~/Obsidian when unset (echo "${VAULT_ROOT:-$HOME/Obsidian}"). Every vault path below is built from $VAULT_ROOT, as shorthand: shell state does not persist between commands, so substitute the resolved path it printed into every command and file path, never the bare $VAULT_ROOT. If that directory does not exist, stop and say so — never create a vault.
Drains $VAULT_ROOT/Profile/observations.md. /observe fills it; this empties it.
The whole file by default. A single observation may be passed as an argument, but the default is the whole file, and that is load-bearing: the repeat signal — the same friction written down three times in different words — is only visible with the items side by side.
Procedure
- Read the file back. Show what is in it, in order, unabridged. Hassan sees the batch before anything is decided.
- One at a time, propose then judge. For each observation, the agent proposes: what change would settle it, and where that change lands. Hassan accepts, redirects, or rejects. Nothing is applied on the agent's own authority.
- Make the change in this sitting. The observation drains to the change, not to a ticket. Edit the file, flip the setting, rewrite the skill — now. Filing a ticket is the admitted exception, for a change genuinely too big for one sitting; if it is being used more than rarely, the sitting has become a triage queue and the drain has failed.
- Remove the item. Outright deletion from
observations.md— no archive section, no "resolved" heading. The change is the record.
The one test
There is no routing table. For each observation, ask: