Reviewing Memory

Reviewing Memory

MCP shortcut: If the doctrine MCP server is connected, use memory_show via MCP tool instead of doctrine memory show for machine-parseable JSON results with backlinks.

A stability-gate audit: systematically pull the highest-impact memories, inspect their quality, and produce an auditable outcome for each. Run before a release, a schema migration, an ADR that shifts subsystem boundaries, or when retrieve returns contradictory or low-confidence results.

Procedure

1. Pull highest-impact memories. Run doctrine memory validate corpus-wide (no REF) to surface dangling relations, stale verifications, and expiring drafts across the entire corpus. The output is your audit queue.

2. Prioritize. Order findings by impact:

   • Memories with scoped paths that have seen high commit churn since attestation (drift risk)
   • Attested (verified) memories — stale attestation on a moving target is worse than unattested
   • High severity × high weight — wrong here hurts

3. Run the checklist on each. For every memory in the audit queue, check:

   • Provenance. Is the source still traceable? Has the cited code/doc moved?
   • Freshness. Is the attestation recent? Has the scoped path churned past usefulness?
   • Metadata efficiency. Is the scope still accurate? Are tags stale? Is the lifespan appropriate?
   • Scope accuracy. Do the path/glob/command scopes still cover the right surface?
   • Actionability. Can a future agent act on this without further research?
   • Duplication. Does this memory overlap with another? Merge or supersede.

4. Thread hygiene. Scan for lingering unverified threads (memory list --type thread). For each:

   • If still relevant, verify it (doctrine memory verify <REF>)
   • If stale, archive it (doctrine memory status <REF> archived)
   • If superseded by newer knowledge, supersede it (doctrine memory status <REF> superseded --by <SUCCESSOR>)

5. Produce outcomes. Every reviewed item must land in exactly one terminal state:

   • verified — re-attested on current tree, metadata updated
   • corrected — edited (doctrine memory edit) with updated scope, trust, or content
   • superseded — pointed at its successor via memory status superseded --by
   • archived — no longer actionable but kept for history
   • promoted — converted to a durable artifact (ADR, spec, or doc) and archived from memory

   No memory leaves review without one of these outcomes recorded.