# CREATION LOG — user-md

## Packaging fix — 2026-07-18

- Drafted a Claude Code packaging manifest so `claude plugin validate` can discover the package. *(That manifest lives in the not-yet-published packaging workspace and is **not** part of this release — do not look for a `.claude-plugin` directory in what you installed.)*
- Retained root `plugin.json` as a compatibility mirror for existing skill-package consumers. Both manifests carry identical metadata, and the operative skill entry remains root `SKILL.md` for both packaging paths.
- This is packaging-only; no behavior fixture, privacy sweep, or cross-harness test was run or newly marked PASS.

## Phase 2 contract layer — 2026-07-18

> **Not published in this repo.** The artefacts listed below were drafted during the
> 2026-07-18 contract-layer pass and deliberately kept internal. None of them ship with
> this skill, and you will not find them in a clone. They are recorded here for
> provenance only.

- Drafted an evidence-bearing agent-modpack component manifest, a schema-pinned structural
  runner, a privacy scan, and a real root-instance gitignore probe. **Unpublished.**
- Drafted `SK-UM-P-001` and `SK-UM-N-001` as independently executable case specifications.
  **Unpublished**, and both remain `not-run`; cross-harness loading and real profile
  behavior are not claimed.

## 1.0.0 — 2026-07-17 · Initial draft

### What this is

First full draft of the user-md skill: a discipline for keeping an AI's understanding of its user in a user-owned Markdown file family (`USER.md` + `USER.local.md` + `user/*.md` overflow), with a hand-written lane and an agent-curated lane.

### Design decisions

1. **Five-section `USER.md`.** Identity facts and preferences are kept in separate sections — separating the two is an established pattern in shipping agent-memory products (distinct namespaces for facts vs. preferences). The dynamic layer (`What I'm up to`) follows the long user-modeling research tradition of treating the user model as explicit, revisable hypotheses rather than fixed truth.
2. **Two lanes, no silent rewriting.** Cross-product consensus supports both: hand-written and auto-collected user data are kept apart, and everything stays user-visible, editable, and deletable. user-md takes a deliberate anti-position against background mechanisms that quietly rewrite a user's profile: the curated lane is append-only, dated, sourced, confidence-tagged, and consolidation (the only legal rewrite of that lane) must leave a changelog line.
3. **Machine-local split.** `USER.local.md` (gitignored) mirrors the established pattern of machine-specific, gitignored companion files in agent instruction systems. One-sentence test: if it stops being true when you switch machines, it does not belong in the portable file.
4. **"persona" is banned throughout.** The word is doubly occupied — UX archetype users on one side, an agent's own character on the other — so any use is ambiguous. Section names follow the facts/preferences lineage instead.
5. **Single-source thresholds.** Every size/frequency threshold (main-file budget, overflow line, promotion bar, consolidation cadence, short-message filter) is defined exactly once, in the threshold table of `references/curation.md`; every other file references the table instead of repeating numbers. Prevents drift when thresholds are tuned.
6. **No phantom runtime.** Growth is a discipline plus optional wiring: a session-start hook is documented as *optional* with an example configuration, and the skill never claims an automated pipeline it does not ship.
7. **Convention lineage stated plainly.** The `USER.md` name and every-session loading model come from the OpenClaw agent workspace; this is credited in the README, along with the clarification that the AGENTS.md standard has no user-profile slot. user-md occupies the user axis only and leaves agent-side files untouched.
8. **Templates are 100% fictional.** All example content uses invented placeholders (Alex Rivera, Lisbon, a roguelike side project); nothing in the distribution derives from any real user's data.

### Naming

- Skill/repo name: `user-md` (adopts the OpenClaw `USER.md` convention).
- README title candidates (slash-phrase describes the mechanism; settled in editorial review):
  - A. `user-md / user memory as a file` — used in the first draft; dropped (misses the growth mechanism, which is the differentiator)
  - B. `user-md / a USER.md that grows` — **final pick** (file shape + growth mechanism, matches the "This is a file that grows" positioning line)
  - C. `user-md / the file that knows you` — dropped (effect, not mechanism)
- Tagline: "Your AI's understanding of you — in a file you own. Moves when you move."
- Spare: "Every repo has a README. Your agent deserves a USER.md."
- Anchor sentence: "Every agent has an About Me. Yours should have an About You."

### Known gaps / pre-release checklist

- [x] Verify current OpenClaw docs for any official `USER.md` *inner* structure — verified in ops review: the official workspace page defines the file's role and loading model only, no inner structure; this skill's five sections stand as a de-facto structural proposal.
- [x] Name-collision sweep (GitHub / npm / marketplace) for `user-md` — done: npm unclaimed; GitHub exact-name hits limited to one unrelated, inactive zero-star repo; no substantive collision.
- [x] Editorial pass on README title candidate — settled on B (see Naming above).
- [x] Manual PII sweep of every tracked public file and automated private-path/secret-pattern scan; templates re-confirmed fictional. — 2026-07-18 Phase 2 structural pass. This does not mark the independent privacy behavior case PASS.