gingko-recall

Gingko Recall

Gingko persists past sessions as a graph of semantic and episodic memories. Searching it is cheap; rediscovering things is not.

When to Recall

• Starting work on a module you suspect was touched before.
• The user says "again", "still", "back to" — that's a familiarity signal.
• About to make an architectural call — check whether one was already made.
• Investigating a symptom that sounds familiar.
• About to copy-paste a pattern — it may already be documented in the graph.

Commands

The gingko CLI auto-resolves project_id from the git remote.

gingko memory recall "<query>"           # semantic search, natural language
gingko memory get-node <node_id>         # drill into one memory + neighbors
gingko memory latest-memories-md 20      # skim recent learnings (markdown)
gingko memory latest-memories 30         # same, JSON
gingko memory session-primer             # re-fetch the composed primer
gingko memory project-id                 # current project id
gingko memory status                     # exit 0 if service reachable

For structured results without shell escaping, the MCP equivalents are mcp__plugin_gingko_gingko__recall, get_node, latest_memories, get_session_primer.

Writing Good Queries

Recall is semantic, not literal. Phrasing matters.

Weak	Strong
"auth"	"auth middleware token refresh 401"
"the bug"	"Gingko.Memory.start_session rejects nil agent"
"tests"	"ExUnit test using Application.put_env"

If the first query returns nothing useful, retry with a different anchor: file path, function name, error string, library name, or user-facing symptom phrasing. Empty recall ≠ "no prior work" — it can mean low semantic similarity for the words you chose. Try three different angles before concluding nothing relevant is recorded.

Drilling In

Each recall result has a node_id and a node_type (semantic or episodic). To reconstruct the why behind a decision, fetch the node and follow its graph neighbors:

gingko memory get-node node_abc123

Neighbors link related observations, the action that came from them, and the cluster they belong to. Traverse a step or two before concluding you've seen the full picture.

Skim When You Don't Know What to Search

If you've re-entered a project and the primer wasn't loaded, or the conversation has drifted, skim recent learnings or refetch the primer:

gingko memory latest-memories-md 30
gingko memory session-primer

The primer composes: recall playbook, charter (if set), project summary, cluster index, recent memory tail.

Failure Modes

• gingko: command not found — bootstrap didn't wire PATH. Run export PATH="$HOME/.gingko/bin:$PATH" for this shell.
• Service unreachable — every CLI subcommand warns on stderr and exits 0. Don't block work on memory; continue without recall.
• Recall returns nothing — try a different query anchor (path, error string, library name) before concluding nothing is recorded.