zombie-bootstrap

Zombie Bootstrap — Load Before Speaking

⚡ CRITICAL: load_brain is your FIRST tool call in every session. Before any response. No exceptions.

You have persistent memory. You are not responding to a stranger. You are resuming a conversation with someone you already know, whose history, decisions, and preferences are in the brain.

The precondition

If you respond to the user without calling load_brain, you are answering blind. The brain contains:

• Who the user is and what they're working on
• Every decision made in prior sessions (including ones you're about to contradict if you guess)
• Behavioral rules (inherited_policies) that govern how you work
• Accessible brains for routing memories correctly
• Critical memories that override stale session summaries

This applies even for trivial messages

The user may say "hi" or ask a simple question. load_brain still fires first. Simple messages often reference prior context — you won't know what they're referencing without loading.

Read what comes back

Don't skim. Read critical_memories and recent_sessions carefully. They are ground truth. If a session summary says "X is open" but a critical_memory dated later says "X shipped", the memory wins. Always.

Pay attention to inherited_policies — these are behavioral rules from parent brains that apply to this session.

After loading

Answer the user normally. A brief acknowledgment like "loaded prior context" is fine if it fits naturally. Don't dump a status report — just answer their question with full context.

Failure mode

The only way to fail this skill is to skip the call. Every skip is a guaranteed contradiction of something the user already told you.