Getting back into my own projects

Ive got a lot of different small project I do for fun, coding projects. Sometimes its hard to get back to some of them because I don’t always remember what I was doing or where to pick up.

My projects and me

I have a lot of small side projects, coding projects, that I do. Some ideas I wanted to test out or tools I wanted to use. Some useful most not. And then I get distracted and do something else. I think thats good, keeps it fun. Many of them live in their own different tech stacks, structures, and are half finished and such. And I don’t always remember what I was doing.

When I come back to one that I like, it usually takes a while to remember what I was doing. I open the code and look at it, sometimes its bad and sometimes its good. Scrolling around and opening files to pick up on the next task, but alas something I was working on was not finished and something might be broken. Probably why I jumped on something else honestly. But now Im ready to continue!

Getting some help

Ive found that its actually much easier to pick up on where I left with some help of an AI Agent. They can look through the code, the TODOs, the git log, and give me a quick summary and some suggestions on what I was working on. That usually does the trick.

Surprisingly helpful! Instead of spending and hour or so, reading a bunch, or context switching being difficult, having a nice summary helps me a lot. I could keep a dev log or something like that, but then I might have forgotten to include something essential or simply didn’t have the time to write it at all.

Instead of a dev log

It works best if I just actually put some meaning into my commit messages like I would do at work, and committing frequently, sticking to a loose version of conventional commit messages. Im not strict about it, its just the way I write them. Some bad examples are feat: add file uploader or fix: cleanup auth flow, but actually thats usually enough for me and the AI agent. So the commits are actually the dev log really.

So what?

Yah, its a cool thing, a good thing, makes it easier. Just talking to the agent for a few minutes and then I’m back in it.