ReflectionCLI 2.0: a local-first thinking CLI for AI-assisted development

The original concept behind this tool won the runner-up award for the Github CLI Challenge earlier this year. As a reminder, ReflectCLI is a tool to promote thoughtful coding through structured reflection. What does it do? Before each commit, answer reflective questions to build your personal developer knowledge dataset. The tool is local-first by design. It stores everything locally inside the current Git repo: .git/git-reflect/log.json No account, no cloud sync, no authentication, and no external AI API call. Why build it? AI-assisted development is powerful, but it can encourage cognitive offloading, letting tools do the thinking instead of developing deeper understanding. git-reflect interrupts this pattern by making reflection part of your workflow. Each answer becomes part of your personal knowledge base, documenting not just what you built, but why you built it that way and what you learned. Over time, this dataset reveals patterns in your thinking and helps you grow as a developer. If you want to read about the original tool, check out my previous post here . Since building the original version, I've spent months researching how AI changes the way developers learn, reason, and make technical decisions. Many of the ideas from those discussions have now been incorporated into ReflectionCLI 2.0. What started as a simple Git pre-commit reflection hook has evolved into a local-first thinking tool for developers working alongside AI assistants. What's New Comprehension debt tracking You can now record artifacts you shipped but don't fully understand yet. reflection debt add "Understand why the cache invalidates on user updates" \ --project api \ --tags cache,ai \ --context "AI generated most of the invalidation logic" These artifacts can easily be retrieved and resolved later. reflection debt list reflection debt resolve debt-001 Explain-back mode This workflow focuses on active recall and asks a series of questions to assess your ability to explain the piece of c