The existence of a large working-notes.md file is a symptom of missing infrastructure, not a solution to the problem of cross-session continuity.
What working-notes.md does
working-notes.md accumulates session state: what was done, what
needs doing, what context the next session needs. Over time it grows
to tens of thousands of words of accumulated context — task lists,
research findings, design decisions, implementation notes, all
interleaved.
Why this is a problem
A 44K working-notes file means:
- Plans aren’t carrying the load. If plans tracked work properly, working notes wouldn’t need to describe what’s in progress or what comes next.
- Decisions aren’t being recorded. If decision records captured the rationale behind choices, working notes wouldn’t need to explain why things are the way they are.
- The encoding loop isn’t running. If insights from conversations were encoded as proper content (terms, concepts, texts), working notes wouldn’t need to preserve them as raw session transcripts.
- TODO.md isn’t being maintained. If the TODO file tracked active, ready, and unplanned work, working notes wouldn’t need task lists.
What working-notes.md should be
Working notes should be thin — a few lines pointing to the active plan, noting any session-specific context that doesn’t belong in a plan (e.g., “emsenn is frustrated about X, don’t repeat that mistake”), and nothing else.
Everything currently in working notes should live somewhere else:
- Task descriptions → TODO.md and plan files
- Design decisions → decision records
- Research findings → texts in the appropriate discipline
- Implementation notes → plan log sections
- Context for next session → the plan’s current state IS the context
Source
This text captures emsenn’s observation from 2026-03-07: “Having a working-notes.md file seems like an indication we’re missing huge chunks of actual governance, planning, and implementation infrastructure.”