Memory Distillation

Memory Distillation

Audit memories for Codex and Codex Lab, preserve useful knowledge in maintained sources, and verify approved retirement from the context each client reuses. Use this workflow only for an explicit memory audit or change request. A completed audit produces a supported proposal; a completed retirement requires evidence from the affected stores and a fresh session's normal retrieval path.

Apply task scope and authorization. Install this skill with the catalog's shared ../references/ directory. Read client memory contracts before discovery, updates, or retirement verification. When changing this skill, use the synthetic evaluation cases; that is not a request to inspect the user's memories.

Scope and approval

• Do not activate implicitly or for ordinary repo work.
• Start with a read-only inventory, audit, and concrete proposal. Do not edit, delete, move, archive, or generate memory files, skills, repo docs, issues, or local config until the user approves that action and scope. Reuse approval already given for the same action and scope; ask only for missing authority.
• Honor a request limited to one client, store, host, or subject. Discovering another store does not authorize reading or changing it. Discovery stays within authorized configuration and documented locations, without disk sweeps or cross-host access.
• Use the owning client's supported update mechanism. An additive-note contract permits an approved note, not direct edits to generated memory, resets, or copying/symlinking stores together. A reset is a separate destructive action.
• Preserve original sessions, rollout records, and historical archives. Retiring their influence on reusable context does not authorize deleting the originals.
• Never put secrets, credentials, private hostnames, customer/client data, private messages, local-only paths, machine-specific values, or personal account details into public skills or reports.

Source roles

Memories are candidate observations. Current maintained sources and verified state take precedence: code and helper contracts for behavior, repo docs and current GitHub state for project work, and local config for private values. Neither client nor a directory name makes a memory store authoritative.

• Skills: reusable, durable, public-safe procedures and workflow preferences.
• Repo docs / GitHub issues: repo-specific design, plans, and follow-up work.
• Local config: private or environment-specific facts with a maintained schema. Use the optional people skill and private people config for durable identity, aliases, contacts, roles, and relationship context.
• Historical evidence: useful provenance, clearly non-authoritative. Every Code is retired as a supported client; classify any discovered former store from current evidence rather than treating its path as proof of ownership.
• Legacy Chronicle archives: private historical screen-history data. This repository does not provide or require an active Chronicle skill. Treat every legacy Chronicle archive as historical evidence. Read the historical archive procedure only when the user explicitly requests Chronicle or screen-history distillation.

Workflow

1. Resolve the requested scope and inventory each relevant configured store, including non-default client homes. Record client ownership, canonical path, aliases, active/historical/unknown status, consumed layers, supported update mechanism, and verification capability. Report inaccessible or out-of-scope locations without reading past that boundary. An empty registry does not establish that the store or its derivatives are empty.
2. Search the authorized layers for stale behavior, transient status, private details, duplicate rules, and unique useful facts. Prefer targeted retrieval and recent summaries; broaden only when needed to cover the requested audit.
3. Classify candidates as promote-to-skill, promote-to-repo-doc-or-issue, move-to-people-local-config, move-to-local-config, keep-historical, or retire-from-reusable-context. Propose deletion/archive only when requested and supported; preserve historical originals by default.
4. Verify each recommendation against maintained sources. Do not turn an old open PR, active job, or CI snapshot into a permanent fact. Before retiring a unique useful rule, verify its replacement exists and is reachable by the target client from the intended checkout; a future plan or an uninstalled worktree is insufficient.
5. Present affected entries, destination or retirement action, reason, evidence, and any authority still needed. Preserve stable useful facts. When private audit artifacts contain person mentions, use the optional people artifact review to route durable facts to approved private config.
6. Carry approved actions through each store's supported mechanism, once per canonical store. If a client only accepts notes, record the scoped note and preserve generated files. If regeneration is unavailable, report the pending capability and continue independent authorized work; do not invent a command or seek approval again for the same action.
7. Check application and then fresh-session retrieval as separate stages, using the evidence rules in the client reference. If stale guidance still surfaces, keep retirement pending. Report only the stage actually demonstrated for each candidate and store.

Result

Return a concise account of audited scope and coverage gaps, proposed or approved actions, maintained destinations, and evidence. Distinguish requested, recorded, applied/regenerated, and retrieval-verified per affected store. State what remains pending and the next supported action. A saved note, changed hash, or clean report alone does not prove retirement from reusable context.