Open-source agent skill preserves the reasoning behind code changes
oliver-zehentleitner · reddit · 2026-07-28
The author released Keep the Why, a free MIT-licensed agent skill for preserving engineering rationale in repositories.
- Problem: coding agents often remember the code but lose the reason behind it.
- The skill captures decision context in plain Markdown while work is happening.
- It separates documentation into:
- docs/ for how to use, test, operate, and deploy
- context/ for why the system is built the way it is
- It records architecture decisions, rejected alternatives, external constraints, workarounds, incident learnings, and abandoned changes.
- Recovered rationale is explicitly labeled as confirmed, inferred, or unknown, and superseded decisions are not rewritten as if they never existed.
- It works without a vector database, external memory service, MCP server, account, API key, or extra infrastructure, and supports tools like Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor, and OpenCode.
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