Tutorials · Lesson 2 of 7

2 · Curate the narrative

You'll turn the raw, auto-seeded steps into a clean account of what was built and why. You need: the trace.json from Lesson 1.

Curated story, honest evidence

Emission seeds each step's title from your raw directives — "yes", "ok now fix it". Those are drafts. Curation is where you rewrite the meta-action narrative into a clean story. The atomic actions underneath never change, so the record stays honest even as the telling gets clearer. You are editing the story, not the evidence.

See the steps

ponens trace meta ls trace.json           # the steps, and how curated each is

Rewrite a step's intent

Give a step a clean, intent-level title (and mark it done):

ponens trace meta set trace.json m3 --title "Add idempotency to capture" --status completed

Fold dead-ends together

Real sessions wander — a false start, a retry. Merge those into a single coherent step so the story reads as intent, not as keystrokes:

ponens trace meta merge trace.json m7 m8   # fold m8 into m7

Set the headline

Finally, give the whole trace a title and an outcome — the one-line answer to "what did this session accomplish?"

ponens trace retitle trace.json --title "Idempotent payment capture" \
    --outcome "Capture is now safe to retry; verified no double-charge."

Check your work

ponens trace view trace.json              # read the cleaned-up story

Notice you only touched titles and grouping — every atomic action, file, and result is exactly as it happened. That separation is what lets a reviewer trust the trace later.

What you learned

• Curation rewrites the meta-action narrative; the atomic actions stay untouched.
• meta ls / set / merge and retitle turn raw directives into intent.
• A good title + outcome make the trace scannable at a glance.