Memory System Toolkit

Reference guides for the memory system: session capture, pattern extraction, and cost tracking.

When to Use

• During Phase 0 (Orient) to load previous session context
• During Phase 6 (Reflect) to capture learnings and patterns
• When the analyst agent tracks costs or extracts patterns

Workflow Integration

Operates in Phase 0 (Orient) and Phase 6 (Reflect). Output supports the analyst agent.

References

Reference	When to load	Content
capture-architecture.md	Before any agent-side memory write	The 2-path contract — ##prefix: is user-typed only; agents write via direct Edit
session-capture.md	Phase 6	Capturing session learnings in 3 categories (patterns/decisions/failures)
pattern-extraction.md	Phase 6	Extracting high-frequency patterns for instruction-file promotion
cost-tracking.md	Phase 0, 6	Token usage tracking, cost reporting, budget alerts
consolidation.md	Manual	Prune stale entries, merge duplicates, archive cost data (run when memory grows large)

How session-capture is invoked

session-capture is not a CLI subcommand. At Phase 6 (Reflect) the agent reads references/session-capture.md and follows its 4 steps using Read / Write / Edit directly. There is no mewkit memory session-capture script — content extraction requires LLM analysis that a static CLI cannot produce.

Subcommands

--prune

Prune old standard-severity entries from canonical JSON stores, then regenerate Markdown views.

Stores subject to pruning: fixes.json, review-patterns.json, and architecture-decisions.json.

What gets pruned:

• ## headings with a date (YYYY-MM-DD, severity: standard) older than threshold (default: 90 days)

What is exempt:

• severity: critical or severity: security entries — never pruned
• Entries without a parseable date — kept as-is (safe default)

How to run:

the memory skill --prune              # default 90-day threshold
the memory skill --prune --days 180   # custom threshold
the memory skill --prune --dry-run    # show what would be archived without moving

Mechanism: prune schema entries in JSON by lastSeen and severity, then run mewkit memory render-views. Report the affected stores and entries.

Recovery: Copy entries from lessons-archive.md back to the appropriate topic file.

Schema Notes

Split JSON files (fixes.json, review-patterns.json, architecture-decisions.json) all use v2.0.0 schema with fields: version, scope, consumer, patterns[], metadata. Each pattern entry supports: id, type, category, severity, domain, applicable_when, context, pattern, frequency, lastSeen.

Gotchas

• Stale patterns applied to changed codebase: Memory suggests patterns from old architecture → Run consolidation when patterns exceed 50 entries; flag patterns with lastSeen > 6 months
• cost-log.json growing unbounded: Every session appends without pruning → Run consolidation to archive entries older than 90 days
• Generated views are not writable: Do not write lessons.md or Markdown topic files. Update the canonical JSON store, then render views.