Building a Self-Documenting Development Workflow with Custom Claude Commands

Most developers hate writing documentation and blog posts. It feels like extra work that slows down the "real" development. I used to be the same way - always putting off logging what I learned, never capturing insights from my day-to-day work.

Then I realized the problem wasn't motivation. It was timing.

The Insight: Documentation and Blog Posts Should Be a Byproduct, Not a Task

What if documentation happened automatically as part of your normal workflow? Not as a separate chore, but as a natural output of the work you're already doing?

That's exactly what I built using custom Claude Code commands.

The Four-Command Pipeline

I created four custom commands in ~/.claude/commands/ that chain together into a self-documenting workflow:

1. /gc - Smart Commit Command

• Analyzes git diffs to understand what changed
• Creates detailed conventional commits
• Splits large changes into atomic commits
• Automatically triggers /log after committing

2. /log - Autonomous Logging Command

• Asks what I did recently
• Extracts interesting learnings and insights
• Creates timestamped markdown log files
• Commits and pushes to a dedicated work_log repo

3. /gpr - Pull Request Automation

• Chains /gc → push → PR creation
• Maintains the self-documenting loop through the entire feature cycle

4. /work-log-blog - Blog Post Generation

• Generates blog post drafts from the accumulated work logs

The Magic: Claude Answers Its Own Questions

Here's where it gets interesting. When /gc triggers /log, Claude doesn't wait for me to manually describe what I did. It already analyzed the git diff to create the commit message, so it uses that same context to answer its own logging questions.

It's a fully autonomous pipeline. I just run /gc when I'm ready to commit, and the system:

1. Analyzes my code changes
2. Creates semantic commits
3. Documents the insights and learnings as work log files.

Zero manual documentation effort.

Why This Matters Beyond Personal Productivity

It not only helps document my work every day (so perhaps I can look back and see how to improve), but it makes writing content very easy. This way, I can post content on X and my website more often, helping me grow my audience and reach more people.

Try It Yourself

If you're using Claude Code, you can build this same workflow:

1. Create custom commands in ~/.claude/commands/ (see the links below)
2. Run /gc when you're ready to commit
3. Run /log to document your work manually (though /gc will call this automatically after commits)
4. Run /gpr to create a pull request for your changes
5. Run /blog to generate a blog post draft from the accumulated logs

Here are the .md files for the commands:

• gc: https://github.com/rishabhpoddar/claude-commands/blob/main/gc.md
• gpr: https://github.com/rishabhpoddar/claude-commands/blob/main/gpr.md
• log: https://github.com/rishabhpoddar/claude-commands/blob/main/log.md (make sure to change the path mentioned in this file)
• work-log-blog: https://github.com/rishabhpoddar/claude-commands/blob/main/work-log-blog.md (make sure to change the path mentioned in this file)