# Development Journal

Chronological record of decisions, attempts, and outcomes.

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## 2026-01-31 - Project Archival Discussion

### Context

The author revisited the project after a period of inactivity and evaluated whether to continue maintaining it or archive it.

### Analysis Performed

**Usage check:**

- PyPI downloads: ~100/month (modest, variable)
- GitHub dependents: 2 repositories
- No open issues or active community engagement

**Project status:**

- Version 0.0.1 (early, single release)
- Core functionality complete and working
- Tests pass, covering cross-framework session sharing
- CI never set up
- No recent development activity

### Options Considered

| Option | Description | Effort |
|--------|-------------|--------|
| **A. Simple Archive** | Add deprecation notice to README, archive the repo on GitHub | Low |
| **B. Convert to "whenwords-style"** | Replace code with SPEC.md + tests.yaml + AI prompt (inspired by [dbreunig/whenwords](https://github.com/dbreunig/whenwords)) | Medium |
| **C. Convert to blog post/gist** | Write up the problem and solution as educational content, archive repo | Medium |

### Decision

**Option A: Simple Archive** was chosen.

### Rationale

1. **The project achieved its goal.** It solved the Flask-to-FastAPI session interoperability problem and documented the solution.
2. **AI advancement makes the package redundant.** The middleware is ~100 lines. Any modern coding agent can generate it given the problem description and Flask's signing internals (`itsdangerous.URLSafeTimedSerializer` with `key_derivation="hmac"`, `digest_method=sha1`, `salt=b"cookie-session"`).
3. **The whenwords-style approach (Option B) was considered but dismissed** because the middleware is Python-specific and framework-specific - there's only one real implementation target, unlike language-agnostic utilities.
4. **Option C (blog post) remains open** as a future possibility but is not required for archival.
5. **Low usage means minimal disruption.** ~100 monthly downloads and 2 dependents mean archiving won't break significant projects.

### Actions Taken

- Created ADR-001 documenting the archival decision
- Updated README.md with archival notice and preserved knowledge
- Created JOURNAL.md (this file)

### Key Knowledge Preserved

The core insight of this project: Flask signs session cookies using `itsdangerous.URLSafeTimedSerializer` with specific configuration (`key_derivation="hmac"`, `digest_method=hashlib.sha1`, `salt=b"cookie-session"`). Starlette's default `SessionMiddleware` uses a different signing method, making sessions incompatible. Additionally, Starlette re-signs the cookie on every request even when session data hasn't changed, which causes Flask sessions to be overwritten.

See [ADR-001](docs/decisions/001-archive-project.md) for the full decision record.

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## 2026-01-31 - Final Release v0.1.0

### Decision

Publish a final v0.1.0 release to PyPI with a `DeprecationWarning` at import time, so users are notified even if they never visit the GitHub repo.

### Changes

- Bumped version from `0.0.1` to `0.1.0` in `__about__.py`
- Added `warnings.warn(..., DeprecationWarning)` to `__init__.py`
- Version `0.1.0` signals the project reached its goal (not a breaking change)

### Rationale

A README notice only reaches users who visit the repo. A deprecation warning at import time is surfaced by `pytest` and other tools, giving downstream projects a heads-up in their test output.
