Keeping docs alive

Skill AInsteinsBR/renata/skills/keeping-docs-alive

Use whenever you finish a task, pause a session, complete a phase, or change the project status. Ensures the living docs (the active plan and CLAUDE.md Section 5) reflect the real state so the next session can resume without loss of context. Auto-activates on "done", "pausing", "completed", "end of phase", "I'm going to stop now".From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add AInsteinsBR/renata --skill keeping-docs-alive

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

8 stars8 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

3.6 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Keeping docs alive during execution

Living docs are the nervous system between sessions. Without them kept up to date, the next session (human or AI) starts from scratch or worse — starts off wrong.

There are exactly two carriers of resumable state — no third file:

The active plan (docs/superpowers/plans/<plan>.md) — execution truth: Status:, checkboxes, deviations.
CLAUDE.md Section 5 (session layer) — a short prose block: where we stopped, what comes next.

Until 0.4.x the method also asked for per-session files in .claude/sessions/ — field projects proved it dead letter (the folder was never created; the state lived in the plan + Section 5 anyway). The convention was removed in 0.5.0. If you find a legacy .claude/sessions/, it's harmless history — don't create new files there.

When this skill activates

Auto-activates when the context involves:

"Finished task X" / "task X is done"
"I'm going to pause" / "stopping for today" / "we'll continue tomorrow"
"Phase X complete"
"I decided to change the approach to Y"
"I'm going to open a PR / final commit"
A plan checkbox being marked as complete

Procedure (2 mandatory steps)

Step 1 — Update the active plan

If the current work corresponds to a task in the plan at docs/superpowers/plans/<plan>.md:

Check the checkboxes of the completed steps: [ ] → [x].
Add a note if the task deviated from the plan (e.g., "I had to add X because Y").
Update the count if there's a "completed: N/M" field in the plan.

Step 2 — Update `CLAUDE.md`

Section 4 (Feature layer) — if there was a phase/feature change:

**Fase ativa:** should point to the actual phase in progress.
**Feature-âncora:** likewise.

Section 5 (Session layer) — whenever you pause/resume, refresh the resumable-state block:

**Plano ativo:** `docs/superpowers/plans/<file>.md` · **Última task:** Task N (Step N.M)
**Próxima ação:** <1 specific sentence>
**Pegadinhas:** <only if discovered this session — 1-2 lines, or omit>

Keep it short — Section 5 is loaded into every session. Emerging decisions don't belong here: they become an ADR (/renata:adr) or a TODO (/renata:todo add).

Section 9 (Next steps) — update to reflect what comes next.

When NOT to activate

❌ Trivial change (typo, comment) — not worth cluttering the docs.
❌ Mid-task ("I just wrote a function") — wait until the whole task is complete.
❌ Refactoring that doesn't change the phase/feature/scope.

Good example

User: "Finished Task 4. I'm going to pause for today."

Skill activates: "I'll update 2 things:

docs/superpowers/plans/2026-05-27-fase-0-spike.md — mark steps 4.1 through 4.11 as [x].

CLAUDE.md Section 5 — 'Plano ativo: fase-0-spike · Última task: Task 4 · Próxima ação: implement the Task 5 component'."

Anti-patterns

❌ Updating only the checkboxes and forgetting CLAUDE.md.
❌ Writing "did several things" in Section 5 with no actionable next step.
❌ Not updating when "I'll continue tomorrow" — tomorrow you'll forget.
❌ Creating .claude/sessions/ files — that convention is dead; the plan + Section 5 carry everything.