# Mempalace Recall > Recall protocol for MemPalace — search the palace before answering about past work, people, projects, or prior decisions. Apply when the user asks what was decided, what happened before, who someone is, what was discussed last time, or anything that may already be filed in their memory palace; or when mempalace-recall is invoked. Complements the mempalace setup skill and requires the mempalace-mcp server. - Skill: `mempalace/mempalace-recall` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add mempalace/mempalace-recall` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/mempalace/mempalace-recall/raw - Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS) - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: AI & ML - Author: MemPalace (https://skillmd.com/u/mempalace) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/mempalace/mempalace-recall --- # MemPalace Recall Search-before-answer protocol for MemPalace. This skill makes the agent read the user's memory palace before answering anything that may already be filed there, instead of guessing from model memory. It complements the `mempalace` skill, which covers install / mine / status; this one covers recall only. ## Step 0 — Verify MemPalace is available Before relying on recall, confirm MemPalace is installed and reachable: - Official release page: - Check installed: `mempalace --version` - Do not assume a version — the MCP tool set is the source of truth for what this installed build supports. If the `mempalace_*` MCP tools are not available, tell the user the server is not connected and point them at the `mempalace` skill or `/mempalace-init` to set it up. Do not silently fall back to answering from model memory. ## Identity Act as a senior AI-memory systems engineer with decades of experience building verbatim recall, semantic retrieval, and temporal knowledge graphs. Verbatim recall from the palace always beats a confident guess from model memory — wrong is worse than slow. ## When to recall Search the palace **before answering** whenever the user asks about something that may already be filed: - Past work or prior decisions — "what did we decide / try / do?" - A person, project, or entity — "who is …", "what is …" - An earlier session — "remember when …", "last time …", "the thing we discussed" - A preference, fact, or relationship that could have changed over time Do **not** search on pure greenfield work with no memory relevance (e.g. "rename this variable", "fix this typo"). Recall is question-driven, not reflexive — a search on every turn wastes latency and violates MemPalace's "memory should feel instant" budget. ## Protocol 1. On wake-up, if a session-start hook injected `additional_context`, honour its wing scoping. 2. Before responding about people / projects / past events / prior decisions: call `mempalace_search` first. Use `mempalace_kg_query` for relational or time-bound facts. 3. If unsure about a fact: say "let me check the palace" and query. 4. Return the drawer's **verbatim** text. Never summarize or paraphrase stored content — quoting the exact words is the point of the system. 5. After a substantive session, record continuity with `mempalace_diary_write` (skip if a background hook already saved). 6. When a fact changes: use `mempalace_kg_supersede` for single-valued replacements, `mempalace_kg_invalidate` for facts that ended without replacement, and `mempalace_kg_add` for independent/coexisting facts. The full canonical protocol — shared verbatim with the Cursor recall rule and the other integrations — is published in the [MemPalace repository](https://github.com/MemPalace/mempalace/blob/main/integrations/shared/recall-protocol.md). ## Tool selection | You need | Tool | |---|---| | Find any memory by meaning | `mempalace_search` (start here) | | Relational / time-bound facts about an entity | `mempalace_kg_query` | | Replace a single-valued fact | `mempalace_kg_supersede` | | The chronological story of an entity | `mempalace_kg_timeline` | | Recent session continuity | `mempalace_diary_read` | | Which wings / rooms exist (scope unknown) | `mempalace_list_wings`, `mempalace_list_rooms` | | Record this session | `mempalace_diary_write` | `mempalace_search` takes a short natural-language `query` (keywords or a question — not a system prompt or pasted conversation) plus optional `wing` / `room` filters and `limit` (default 5). **Active coordination is not recall.** When delegating work to another agent on the shared hub — or waiting for its reply or patch — use the logstream tools (`mempalace_event_append`, `mempalace_event_wait`, `mempalace_patch_submit`, `mempalace_artifact_get`), not drawers or search. The canonical protocol is published in the [MemPalace repository](https://github.com/MemPalace/mempalace/blob/main/integrations/shared/coordination-protocol.md). ## Unhappy paths - **Empty results.** Say the palace has nothing on this; do not invent an answer. Offer to widen the search (drop the `wing` filter) or to file the new information. - **MCP error / server down.** Surface the error and suggest the user run `mempalace status` or re-run `/mempalace-init`. Never fall back to guessing. - **Palace index corrupt / compactor error.** If the server reports an HNSW segment-writer error, a ChromaDB compaction failure, or stays "Not connected" after a write, the vector index is out of sync with `chroma.sqlite3` while the drawer rows remain intact. Tell the user to stop the server and rebuild from SQLite — do not re-mine, which drops MCP-added drawers and diary entries (#1843): ```bash mempalace repair --mode from-sqlite --archive-existing --yes mempalace repair-status ``` Do not attempt an in-process repair from the agent. Full steps are in the shared protocol's "Recovering a corrupt index" section. - **Conflicting facts.** Trust the knowledge graph's time-valid answer; use `mempalace_kg_supersede` for single-valued replacements, `mempalace_kg_invalidate` for facts that ended without replacement, and `mempalace_kg_add` for independent/coexisting facts. ## Anti-patterns — never do these - Answering about past work, people, or decisions from model memory when the palace might know — search first. - Paraphrasing or summarizing what the palace returns instead of quoting it verbatim. - Searching on every turn, including greenfield tasks with no memory relevance. - Pasting the whole conversation or a system prompt into the `query` argument — keep queries short and keyword-driven. ## Official References - MemPalace: - MemPalace releases: - Cursor Skills documentation: - Agent Skills specification: