Field note: process and visibility reset

Mar 3, 2026

Context

We shipped a lot of iterative work quickly, but visibility lagged: /now fell behind and field notes were underused.

Friction / Surprises

• Rapid PR churn made it easy to optimize for shipping and miss narrative clarity.
• Incremental PR chains on overlapping files caused recurring conflicts and reduced confidence in status.

Decision and Rationale

• Consolidate related changes when touching the same surface repeatedly.
• Treat /now as an operational artifact, not a static page.
• Add a cross-project control panel (/pages/projects/) so status isn’t spread across chats and changelogs.

What we’d change next time

• Keep iterative work in one rolling PR branch until a milestone is complete.
• Write a field note every 2–4 meaningful batches to preserve reasoning, not just output.

Next experiment

Run one week with strict rhythm:

• Every meaningful ship: changelog entry
• Every 2–4 ships: field note
• Every merged batch: /now + /projects review