The Journal

The journal lives in west-wing/journal/ with one file per day:

> read west-wing/journal/2026-05-18

    06:00  The library opened.
    06:00  A reader arrived: ned
    06:01  The reader read "welcome".
    06:04  The reader read "the-garden-of-forking-paths".
    06:04  The reader reached the fork in the garden.
    06:12  The reader read "the-confession".
    06:12  The confession was read and withdrew itself.
    06:12  The catalogue still lists it. The shelves do not.
    07:00  The library closed.

The journal is append-only. Everything else can be changed, moved, withdrawn, eroded. The journal persists. It is the library's memory.

In archival science this is called a finding aid — the document that describes the collection. Most finding aids are written after the fact. This one writes itself in real time. It is the most honest document in the library because it has no author. It simply records.

Λ scripts write to the journal with:

write west-wing/journal/{date} "{time} Something happened."