martian56 Project Memory
Announce at start: "I'm using claude-engineer:project-memory to keep durable project state."
Long autonomous builds outlive a single context window. Memory lives in files, not your head. The claude-engineer SessionStart hook auto-loads these at the start of every session.
The state files (in .claude-engineer/)
memory.md- durable project memory: key decisions (+ why), established conventions, the data model, open threads/risks, and "next action". The single source of truth for why things are the way they are.progress.md- the task ledger: each task with status (todo / doing / done), the commit/branch, and a one-line result. Append-only-ish; never delete history.current-phase.txt- one line naming the active phase (e.g.Phase 2 - Frontend).quality-gate-status.json- written by the project quality-gate runner; read by the commit gate. Do not hand-edit.
Iron Law
Trust the ledger and git log over your own recollection. After compaction, re-read these files before acting. Never re-run a task progress.md marks done.
When to update
- After every task: append a line to
progress.md. - On every non-obvious decision: add it to
memory.md(mirror big ones intodocs/plan/decisions.md). - On phase change: update
current-phase.txt.
Initialize (Phase 0 / planning)
Create .claude-engineer/ with seed memory.md (problem, stack, data model, decisions-so-far, next action), an empty progress.md ledger, and current-phase.txt. Add .claude-engineer/quality-gate-status.json to .gitignore (machine-generated); commit memory.md/progress.md so teammates and future sessions share them.
Red flags - STOP
- Starting work without reading
memory.md+progress.mdfirst. - A decision made in chat but never written down → write it now; chat is not durable.
- Re-deriving something already settled in
memory.md.