Dev Journal is an editor-only Unreal Engine plugin that records meaningful project activity as you work and turns it into deterministic, verifiable Markdown: daily development logs, living asset documents, system overviews and change histories.
Dev Journal is not a chatbot.
There is no conversation, no prompt box and no assistant. AI is entirely optional, switched off by default, and used only as a constrained wording layer over facts the plugin has already recorded. Every AI sentence must cite the recorded facts that support it, or it is discarded. Deterministic documentation is always the authoritative output, and is always complete without AI.
Dev Journal watches the editor for things that actually matter — a Blueprint's structure or graph logic changing, a dependency appearing, an asset being renamed, a C++ file being edited, a commit landing — and writes that history down in a form a human can read and a reviewer can check.
Everything it writes is derived from something it observed. The plugin does not guess what a system is for, why a change was made, or whether code got better. It records what changed, and where.
Nine things the plugin does, all of them from observed project state.
Components, variables, functions, interfaces, parent class, and per-graph logic fingerprints, diffed between saves.
One Markdown document per tracked asset, rewritten in place as the asset evolves.
An append-only record of what changed and when.
Related assets and native classes clustered from recorded relationships, with generated overviews.
One Markdown file per day summarising sessions, changes and source control activity.
Which project C++ files changed, grouped by module.
Branch, revision and working-copy state from Git or Perforce — read-only, always.
Only the documents affected by a change are re-rendered.
A wording layer that must cite recorded facts. Off by default, local-first, and never required.
AI is optional. When you do switch it on, it is not allowed to speak freely about your project.
Enabling AI sends nothing. Switching provider sends nothing. Selecting a model that is not installed does not install it. Generation only happens when you ask for it.
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Enable AI | Off |
| Auto-generate summaries | Off |
| Provider | Ollama (local) |
| Ollama model | qwen3:4b |
| Ollama base URL | http://127.0.0.1:11434 |
| Context size | 8192 |
| Low Resource Mode | On |
| Keep model loaded | Off |
| Concurrent requests | 1 |
| Allow project data to external AI | Off |
Dev Journal is designed so that nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly allow it.
localhost / 127.0.0.1 is
treated as local.Config/,
never committed, and never rendered into documentation.| Engine | Status |
|---|---|
| UE 5.7.4 | Supported, verified |
| UE 5.8.2 | Supported, verified |
Supported platform: Windows 64-bit.
No other platform is supported in this release. Earlier and later engine versions are not
claimed. When moving a project between engine versions, delete Intermediate/
before rebuilding.
1. Close the Unreal Editor.
2. Copy the DevJournal folder into your project's Plugins/ directory, so that you have
<YourProject>/Plugins/DevJournal/DevJournal.uplugin
3. Reopen the project. If prompted to rebuild modules, accept.
4. Confirm the plugin is enabled in Edit -> Plugins -> Editor -> Dev JournalThe plugin is editor-only and is never included in a packaged game build. Full step-by-step instructions, including the Unreal C++ toolchain requirement for Blueprint-only projects, are in the documentation.
Dev Journal never modifies your work.
It is an editor-only tool. It observes a project and writes documentation about it. It never modifies your assets, your source, or your working copy.
Open Tools → Dev Journal, work normally, and press Generate Report. No configuration is required, and no network connection is used unless you explicitly enable AI.