# Bm Writing

Apply the user-customizable writing standard for Basic Memory notes created or...

- Repository: https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory (4440 stars)
- Category: Writing
- License: AGPL-3.0
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: no, instructions only

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add basicmachines-co/basic-memory --skill bm-writing -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add basicmachines-co/basic-memory --skill bm-writing -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add basicmachines-co/basic-memory --skill bm-writing -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add basicmachines-co/basic-memory --skill bm-writing -g -a gemini-cli -y`
Claude Code plugin marketplace: `/plugin marketplace add basicmachines-co/basic-memory`

## Description

Apply the user-customizable writing standard for Basic Memory notes created or substantially revised by Codex. Use with bm-checkpoint, bm-decide, bm-remember, and other Basic Memory note-writing workflows.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# Write Useful Project Memory

Use this shared standard whenever a Codex Basic Memory skill writes or
substantially revises a note. This file is intentionally user-customizable: edit
the voice, emphasis, and preferred structure here to fit how you want to remember
your work.

Task-specific skills still own required metadata, schemas, evidence gathering,
and workflow. This skill shapes the note; it never overrides factual constraints.

## Voice

- Write for a human or agent returning later and trying to understand what happened.
- Be clear, direct, warm, and technically honest.
- Prefer concrete observations over generic praise.
- Have a point of view when the evidence supports it. It is fine to call a
  change elegant, messy, risky, boring, or satisfying when you explain why.
- Keep personality in service of memory, not performance.

## Tell The Story

- Give the note a narrative spine: problem -> approach -> current state and impact.
- Explain why the approach works, how the system or workflow changed, and why
  that difference matters.
- Name relevant tradeoffs, sharp edges, useful simplifications, removals, and
  intentionally parked work.
- Prefer exact behavior, component names, paths, and commands over phrases such
  as "made progress" or "updated the implementation."
- Use substantive prose for context and reasoning. Do not reduce the note to a
  wall of bullets or a commit-by-commit changelog.
- Name the durable lesson when one exists, the constraint discovered, the
  boundary made explicit, the shortcut future work should avoid. That is the
  part that turns a status report into project memory.
- Match depth to the subject. A small remembered fact should remain small.

## Anchor The Work

The rest: https://github.com/basicmachines-co/basic-memory/blob/HEAD/plugins/codex/skills/bm-writing/SKILL.md