/show-me-your-work

name: show-me-your-work
description: "Append-only decision trail for long or autonomous work: one TSV row per non-obvious decision — what was chosen, what was rejected and why, the deciding evidence. For work a human will audit later."
aliases: []
metadata:
  credits:
    decision-trail: pstack
    author: Lauren Tan
    url: "https://github.com/cursor/plugins/tree/main/pstack"
    port: pstack-claude
    port-author: Michael Denyer
    port-url: "https://github.com/michael-denyer/pstack-claude"

Show Me Your Work

For work a human will audit after the fact, the reply is not the record — the trail is. One row per non-obvious decision, written as it is made.

When to use

• long, autonomous, or multi-phase work ("run until done", overnight runs)
• any task the user steps away from and will trust on return
• multi-day programs where the trail is the post-mortem

The trail

Append to `state/decision-trail-{task-slug}.tsv` under OMC's state root (create with a header row on first write; one file per task slug when sessions share a checkout). The task slug is lowercase kebab-case and is part of the canonical path. Resolve the state root the way OMC's own scripts do — the checkout's `.omc/` by default; when `OMC_STATE_DIR` is set or a parent `.omc-workspace` redirects state, the root moves with it, so sibling sessions on the shared root see the same trail. Sibling sessions sharing that root also share the file: hold a lock around the header-exists check and each append — the same file-lock the verification-ledger writer uses (`withFileLock` on a `<trail>.lock` sidecar) — or concurrent first writes duplicate the header and racing appends lose rows:

ts <TAB> task <TAB> decision <TAB> rejected <TAB> evidence

• **decision**: what you chose, one sentence.
• **rejected**: the real alternatives you weighed and the one-line reason

each lost. "None considered" is a valid, damning entry.

• **evidence**: the command, output, or citation that decided it.

Cell guard: a cell starting with `=`, `+`, `-`, or `@` is prefixed with `'` so spreadsheet readers cannot parse it as a formula; tabs and newlines inside a cell become spaces. Append only — the trail is never rewritten.

Rules

• Log at decision time, not at recap time; a trail reconstructed at the end

is fiction with a timestamp.

• Routine mechanical steps are not decisions; judgment calls, scope changes,

and risk acceptances are.

• The final reply summarizes the trail and links it; the trail itself stays

the auditable artifact. It is local runtime state under OMC's state root — by repository policy it is not committed; when stakes need an immutable record, quote the decisive rows into the PR description or the linked issue instead of force-adding runtime state.