Your README proves the work. It doesn't prove what it felt like before it worked.

@josaphatstar said something in a comment thread here this week that I have not stopped turning over.

He documents his projects in short READMEs. He said he has been meaning to do it more properly. Then he named the gap himself: a README describes what a project does once it is finished. It does not capture what it felt like before it worked.

Two kinds of evidence, and they answer two different questions.

The first answers "can I build this?" Slowly, over years. You collect finished things and the answer improves.

The second answers the question that actually shows up when you start something unfamiliar. Not "am I capable." It is "have I been this lost before, and did it pass?"

That one does not accept a portfolio. A finished project is proof you could do the last one, not this one. And the record that would answer it is the record almost nobody keeps, because the moment a thing works it stops looking confusing. Three months on, what took you three weeks reads as obvious, and the evidence that you were ever stuck evaporates exactly when you need it.

So: one line, in the week something finally works. What broke. What fixed it. How long it took. Not a README. A README is for whoever clones the repo next. This is for the version of you who is about to start something new and has forgotten the inside of that feeling.

I keep the same kind of record about writing, and the line that ends up mattering is never the one I expect. Most of what I was sure was the problem turned out not to be.

So what is yours? The thing you were certain was the blocker, before you found out it wasn't.