compounding-memory

Compounding Memory

A stateless model only compounds if the environment around it remembers. This skill is the discipline that turns scattered notes into memory that actually gets consulted.

The 5-stage progression

Good memory walks: Fail → Investigate → Verify → Distill → Consult. Weak memory stops at stage 1 (notes + guesses, never re-read). The win is reaching stages 3–5: facts that say how they were checked, rules consulted before re-deriving, and a resume pointer.

A state file with sections matching the stages:

## Verified facts     # stage 3 — stop guessing; each line says how it was checked
## General rules      # stage 4 — consult BEFORE re-deriving
## Open failures      # stages 1–2 — work in progress, with a repro pointer
## Lessons learned    # stage 4 — distillations
## Last session       # stage 5 — resume pointer, not a restart

Two operational rules that decide whether it compounds

1. Write before walking away. Every session ends by updating the state file — verified facts, new rules, where you stopped. An un-written session is a lost one.
2. Read at session start. Without this, even a frontier model regresses to shallow memory behavior. Read the state file before acting.

Mark how each fact was verified

The single highest-leverage habit: every persisted fact carries how/when it was checked, not just the claim.

- The deploy job pushes schema via flyctl proxy.  (Verified-by: read ci.yml:90-152, 2026-06-14)
- Rule count is 70.  (Verified-by: grep samples.ts + test asserts toBe(70))

A claim without a Verified-by: is a guess until proven — treat it as stage 1, not stage 3. Recalled memories reflect what was true when written; re-verify a named file/flag/count before relying on it.

What to persist (and not)

Persist: non-obvious facts, decisions + their rationale, corrections/feedback, durable gotchas, resume pointers. Don't persist what the repo already records (code structure, git history, things in CLAUDE.md) or what only mattered to one conversation. One fact per memory; link related facts.

See PROVENANCE.md for sources.