Memory Loop Setup

Memory loop bootstrap (memory-loop-setup)

What you are installing is not files but a loop: capture (6 types) → shelf (BRIEF, caps + expiry) → recall (every surface reads it at session start) → judgment (human gate) → new captures. The plumbing lives in templates/; this skill is the procedure for planting it in a target repo.

0. Confirm the target

Confirm the target repo root and 2–5 domains (e.g. investing · career · projects) with the user — if they already came up in conversation, use those. If the target already has BRIEF.md · open-loops.md · sessions/, stop and report the current state (partial installs and upgrades are a human decision). If the target is not a git repo, propose git init first — git is the loop's safety net. Done when: path, domains, and file-collision status are each confirmed in one line.

1. Plant the files

Copy the 7 templates into the target and substitute placeholders — {DOMAIN_N} (duplicate the ## {DOMAIN_N} section once per domain) · {TODAY} (install date) · {TODAY+28} (loop-ROI falsification line = install date + 28 days). If a user domain is itself "meta/system"-like, merge it with the fixed ## Meta (loop health) section (no duplicate sections):

If you relocate the capture log, update the path constants at the top of build_brief.py too. If the user's timezone is not the default, change TZ_OFFSET_H in build_brief.py and the TZ= line in session-card-check.sh together — changing only one desynchronizes the hook's and the builder's "today". Done when: the list of created/modified files is printed.

2. Merge the hooks

Merge the SessionStart and Stop entries from hooks.json into the target's .claude/settings.json preserving existing hooks (merge as parsed JSON in python — no string splicing; start from {} if the file is absent). Done when: python3 -c "import json;json.load(open('.claude/settings.json'))" passes after the merge.

3. First build

Run python3 tools/build_brief.py — BRIEF.md must generate even from empty sources (missing data shows honestly as "(none)"). Done when: BRIEF.md exists and is within the 12 KB budget.

4. Brief the discipline (half of the install is habit)

Deliver the following to the user, and ignite the loop by writing the first capture line together on the spot:

• Only 6 capture types: hypothesis · falsification · principle · bias · question · shift. A falsification (a broken assumption) is the most valuable. Instructions, greetings, and status chatter are never captured (rule born from a measured noise incident).
• Three closing doors: resolve · reject (record the reason — prevents re-investigation) · expire. Leaving items open-but-dead is the worst outcome — the registry rots into an archive.
• A warm layer dies by growing: BRIEF's caps and expiry ARE the design. The moment you want to raise a cap is the warning sign.
• Human gate: promotions into the profile/principles canon happen only after a human judgment. Verify an agent's report of a canon write against the actual diff.
• The card gate will fire the day you install — that is normal. Writing the install itself up as the first session card is a good ignition.
• Optional extensions (later, once material accumulates): a morning-nudge / evening-sweep cron via a resident agent, and after ~4 weeks a profile-mining pass (see the repo README → Optional extensions).

Guardrails

• Never overwrite existing files — skip collisions and report them (§0 should have caught them already).
• The templates' human-gate and no-fabrication clauses are not to be deleted or weakened during planting — those clauses are the loop's quality itself (rewording for locale is fine).
• Record the install as a commit whose message names this skill — on an existing repo use a branch; on a newborn repo (right after git init) commit straight to main (avoids an unborn main).