ix-memory

ix-claude-plugin

A Claude Code plugin that turns Claude into a graph-reasoning engineering agent using Ix Memory as its structured memory backend.

Claude + Ix = reasoning engine + persistent code knowledge graph. Skills are cognitive abstractions (not CLI wrappers) that minimize token usage and maximize accuracy.

Installation

/plugin marketplace add ix-infrastructure/ix-claude-plugin
/plugin install ix-memory

Restart Claude Code after installing.

After install, Claude is taught to prefer Ix for structural questions, hooks automatically front-run common search/edit paths with Ix context, and Claude appends a short final Ix section when hooks materially helped on that turn.

Requirements

• Ix Memory installed and running (ix status returns ok)
• jq in PATH
• ripgrep (rg) in PATH

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install jq ripgrep

# macOS
brew install jq ripgrep

Ix Pro is optional. All skills and hooks work with basic Ix. Pro adds session briefing injection (goals, bugs, decisions) via the ix-briefing.sh hook.

Skills

High-level cognitive skills — each one infers intent, orchestrates multiple graph queries, and synthesizes output. None are CLI aliases.

Skill	What it does	Key rule
/ix-understand [target]	Build a mental model of a system or the whole repo	Graph only — no source reads
/ix-investigate <symbol>	Deep dive: what it is, how it connects, execution path	Graph first, one symbol read max
/ix-impact <target>	Change risk: blast radius, affected systems, test targets	Depth scales with risk level
/ix-plan <targets...>	Risk-ordered implementation plan for a set of changes	Parallel impact, finds shared dependents
/ix-debug <symptom>	Root cause analysis from symptom to candidates	Targeted reads at suspects only
/ix-architecture [scope]	Design health: coupling, smells, hotspots	Graph only — never reads source
`/ix-docs [--full] [--style narrative	reference	hybrid] [--split] [--single-doc] [--out ]`

All skills fall back gracefully when ix is unavailable.

Agents

Autonomous multi-step agents for complex tasks:

Agent	Purpose
ix-explorer	General-purpose graph exploration, open-ended questions
ix-system-explorer	Full architectural model of a codebase or region
ix-bug-investigator	Autonomous investigation from symptom to root cause candidates
ix-safe-refactor-planner	Blast radius + safe change sequencing for refactors
ix-architecture-auditor	Full structural health report with ranked improvements

Automatic hooks

Trigger	Hook	Effect
User sends any prompt	UserPromptSubmit → ix-briefing.sh	Injects session briefing (goals, bugs, decisions) once per 10 min — requires Ix Pro; also instructs Claude to append a short final Ix section when hooks helped
Claude runs Grep or Glob	PreToolUse → ix-intercept.sh	Front-runs with ix text + ix locate/ix inventory
Claude runs Bash with grep/rg	PreToolUse → ix-bash.sh	Extracts pattern, front-runs with ix text + ix locate
Claude edits a file	PreToolUse → ix-pre-edit.sh	Runs ix impact before the edit
Claude edits a file	PostToolUse → ix-ingest.sh (async)	Runs ix map <file> to update the graph
Claude finishes responding	Stop → ix-annotate.sh	Emits a factual summary of how ix helped on that turn on non-modelSuffix channels
Claude finishes responding	Stop → ix-map.sh (async)	Runs ix map to refresh the full graph

hooks/ix-read.sh remains in the repo as a disabled placeholder, but it is not registered in hooks/hooks.json and does not run at runtime.

All hooks bail silently if ix is not in PATH or the backend is unreachable.

Debugging ix Hook Calls

If you want to see exactly which ix CLI commands Claude-triggered hooks run, start Claude Code with IX_DEBUG_LOG set in its environment:

export IX_DEBUG_LOG=/tmp/ix-hooks.log
tail -f /tmp/ix-hooks.log

The hooks will append lines like:

[2026-04-19T12:34:56-0700] [ix-intercept] CMD ix text AuthService --limit 15 --format json --path src/
[2026-04-19T12:34:56-0700] [ix-intercept] CMD ix locate AuthService --format json

CMD ... lines are the exact shell-escaped ix invocations. INJECT ... lines show the exact context a hook injected back into Claude.

Uninstall

/plugin uninstall ix-memory