Atuin Memory

Project Memory with Atuin

Store and retrieve project context using atuin kv to persist across sessions.

Project Detection

Reuse these variables in all commands:

PROJECT=$(basename "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null)" 2>/dev/null || basename "$PWD")
BRANCH=$(git branch --show-current 2>/dev/null)
BRANCH=${BRANCH:-main}

Before Starting Work

echo "=== $PROJECT ($BRANCH) ==="

# Discover what memories exist for this project
atuin kv list --namespace "project-metadata" | grep -F "$PROJECT-" || echo "(no memories found)"

Then retrieve relevant memories:

# Empty output means memory doesn't exist
atuin kv get --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-plan"
atuin kv get --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-spec"
atuin kv get --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-todo"

Acting on Retrieved Memories

Storing Memories

For multi-line content, write to a temp file first to avoid shell escaping issues:

# 1. Write content to temp file
# 2. Store from temp file
atuin kv set --namespace "project-metadata" --key "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-plan" "$(cat /tmp/plan.md)"

# 3. Verify storage succeeded
atuin kv get --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-plan" | head -5

For short single-line values, store directly:

atuin kv set --namespace "project-metadata" --key "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-status" "in-progress"

Key Naming

Deleting Memories

# Delete a specific key
atuin kv delete --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-plan"

# Verify deletion (should return empty)
atuin kv get --namespace "project-metadata" "$PROJECT-$BRANCH-plan"

Quick Reference

Argument syntax is inconsistent across subcommands — pay attention to positional vs flag arguments: