traillisted

# Trail *The record of what actually happened.* *Memory Model role: Writes the core of the memory layer — `.trail/audit-trail.md`, the append-only record every other skill reads.* > **Governing principle:** [Observable Autonomy](../PRINCIPLES.md#principle-2-observable-autonomy) — *The degree of autonomy a system deserves is bounded by the degree of transparency it provides.* This skill is how that transparency is produced. Autonomy without evidence is abdication. When an agent does work autonomously, the question is never "did it do something?" but "can someone who wasn't there reconstruct what happened, why, and whether to trust it?" A trail that answers this earns the right to more autonomy. A trail that doesn't — or doesn't exist — means autonomy must be constrained regardless of how competent the work was. ``` Evidence → Trust → Autonomy ``` --- ## The Structure The trail lives in the **root of the target repo being worked on** — not in the skills install directory. If you are improving `c:\git\clikit`, the trail is `c:\git\clikit\.trail\audit-trail.md`. If you are improving `~/projects/myapp`, the trail is `~/projects/myapp/.trail/audit-trail.md`. Every repo gets its own trail. The trail is local evidence for that project — it belongs with the project. One file: `.trail/audit-trail.md` in the target repo root. Append-only. One `##` entry per session, newest at the bottom. **Before any write: create the `.trail/` directory in the target repo root if it does n