# Typmem Learn > Capture a durable fact — a "learning" / recipe card — to ~/.typmem/memory/learnings/. A learning is a distilled, timeless fact about the world (a gotcha, a constraint, a how-things-work truth) that stays useful long after the work that produced it is done. Use this whenever you discover something worth keeping, when the user says "remember this", "note that", "save this", "TIL", or "lesson learned", and use it to extract durable facts out of a retro after a session. This is the primary memory-capture skill — reach for it often, even when the user doesn't say the word "learning". Do NOT use it for session narrative, status, or what-happened-today; that is a retro — use typmem-retro for those. - Skill: `thaitype/typmem-learn` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add thaitype/typmem-learn` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/thaitype/typmem-learn/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Docs & Writing - Author: thaitype (https://skillmd.com/u/thaitype) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/thaitype/typmem-learn --- # typmem-learn Capture one durable fact as a recipe card under `~/.typmem/memory/learnings/`. A learning is *what you now know about the world* — useful to anyone, indefinitely, even someone who never saw the painful session that produced it. A learning is **valid and usable the moment you capture it** — it does not wait for any review. `typmem-judge` later tidies learnings and may propose that the strongest ones be promoted to `precedents/` or `rules.md`, but that is optional and non-blocking. ## Learning vs retro — read this first - **Learning = recipe card.** "What I now know about the world." A distilled fact. No story, no timeline, no `I`. True regardless of which day or project hit it. → goes here. - **Retro = diary.** "What happened to me." Status, decisions-in-flight, dead ends, follow-ups. → goes to `typmem-retro`. The test: **"Will this still matter after the work that produced it is finished?"** - Yes → it is a learning. Capture it here. - No → it is retro material. Do NOT write it here; it belongs in `typmem-retro`. ## What makes a good learning - **Atomic** — one fact per file, so each can be searched, judged, and promoted on its own. If you have three facts, write three files. - **No `I`, no timeline, no story.** State the fact, not the journey that produced it. - **Self-contained** — understandable by someone who never saw the work behind it. - **Specific and actionable** — a constraint, a gotcha, a pattern, a how-things-work truth. Not a vague impression. Example of the move — turn a diary sentence into a recipe card: > Diary (retro): "Spent two hours today fighting the iii-engine install, the binary kept failing on this machine, eventually gave up." > > Recipe card (learning): "iii-engine has no prebuilt binary for this arch — anything depending on it needs the Docker fallback." ## Two ways to use this - **Direct capture (default).** You (or the user) have a fact in mind right now → write one learning file. - **Extract from a retro.** Point at a retro file (or the latest one in `~/.typmem/memory/retro/`) → read it, pull out each durable fact, and write one learning file per fact. Distil — do not copy the narrative across. ## How to write it 1. Make sure the directory exists: `mkdir -p ~/.typmem/memory/learnings` 2. Distil the fact and run the test above. If it fails (it only matters for this session), stop — it belongs in `typmem-retro`, not here. 3. Build a slug from the **fact itself** (not the session): lowercase kebab-case, 2–6 words, no spaces (e.g. `iii-engine-no-prebuilt-binary`, `aca-sidecar-no-host-network`). 4. Target file: `~/.typmem/memory/learnings/.md` — no date prefix. Learnings are timeless; only retro carries a date in the filename. 5. Write this frontmatter, then the body: ``` --- author: reviewer: created: YYYY-MM-DD --- ``` **Leave `reviewer` empty.** An empty `reviewer` just means `typmem-judge` has not looked at this one yet — it does not mean the learning is unusable. The learning is valid right away. Do not fill `reviewer` in from this skill. 6. Body: state the fact in recipe-card shape — a short, self-contained claim. Free-form prose is fine; no fixed template yet. Keep the discipline: no `I`, no timeline. 7. If a file with that slug already exists: it is probably the same fact. Either refine the slug to be more specific, or update the existing file rather than creating a near-duplicate. (Automatic dedup comes later with `typmem-judge` / index search — for now, use judgement.) When extracting from a retro, repeat steps 2–7 once per durable fact you find. ## File rules - Location: `~/.typmem/memory/learnings/` - Filename: `.md` — no date prefix (timeless fact) - Frontmatter (MVP): `author`, `reviewer` (empty — `typmem-judge` fills it once it has looked), `created` - One fact per file ## Don't - Don't write session narrative, status, or what-happened here — that is a retro (`typmem-retro`). - Don't fill in `reviewer` yourself — that is `typmem-judge`'s job; an empty field just means the judge hasn't looked at it yet, not that the learning is unusable. - Don't bundle multiple facts into one file — split them so each can be judged and promoted independently. - Don't promote a learning to `precedents/` from here — that is a human review step handled by a later skill.