The 2026-06-06 normalization sweep (3f9a89b, 283 files) prepended a stray
permalink-only frontmatter block to 39 memory files, 20 of them session wrap
records. Any real frontmatter parser reads the FIRST block, gets `permalink`
alone, and never sees name/description/type.
The sharp case: `strip_frontmatter` exists specifically to stop thread extraction
from matching inside `description:` — its docstring says so. On those 20 wrap
records it strips the stray block and hands the real frontmatter back AS BODY,
producing exactly the condition it was written to prevent.
Repair merges permalink into the real block and drops the duplicate. Nothing
retyped: frontmatter and body are carried as slices, body md5 asserted unchanged.
TWO DEFECTS OF MY OWN, both found only after claiming success:
1. THREE FILES DAMAGED BY THIS SESSION'S OWN STAMPING COMMIT (ef6fa94). That
script located frontmatter with a non-greedy `^---\n.*?\n---\n`, which on a
stray-block file matches the STRAY block — so it appended superseded_by to the
wrong block and orphaned the real frontmatter into the body. That is the same
non-greedy-first-block blindness diagnosed in strip_frontmatter one hour
earlier, reproduced in the tool written to clean up after it.
And the post-stamp check reported "malformed: none" because it asked "does the
file start with frontmatter then a banner" — true for all three — while the
claim was "the stamp preserved the record's metadata". The control's subject
was adjacent to the claim's, for the sixth time today and the first time in my
own verification. Repaired, verified against the pre-stamp file from git: no
key lost, prose preserved.
2. REPAIRING 20 APRIL-MAY WRAP RECORDS MOVED THEIR MTIMES TO TODAY, and
`sec_pause` picked "newest wrap" by mtime — so the digest promoted an April
session to `Last wrap` and lost both the pulling thread and the open question.
Caught by the DEGRADED section, which is the honest-degradation mechanism doing
its job. `sec_pause` now selects by git add-time, like `wrap_events`. Residual
stated in the comment: add-time lags the wrap by hours, so `Last wrap` is an
upper bound — wrong by hours where mtime was wrong by months.
Verified after: 0 two-block patterns, 0 orphaned frontmatter, 16 stamps intact
with name: present, 381 pointers resolve, 0 dead, selftest PASS, drift clean,
digest reports 0 degraded sections and the correct last wrap.
Not defects: context-discipline.md and relational-gap-analysis.md use the
`title:`/`type: note` convention and have no `name:` — flagged by my check, correct
as they stand.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_013Y6t6qx7cpaCu5xGdD36u4
Basic Memory v0.21.6 first sync over the live memory dir (steward-authorized
live-dir trial, Option A 2026-06-06): adds permalink: to frontmatter, refolds
long YAML description lines, strips final newlines. Bodies untouched —
verified via full diff classification. From this commit forward, any diff in
claude/memory shows only what Basic Memory or the session writes.
Trial design: MemPalace untouched as incumbent; git status check on this dir
at every wrap; end-of-day evaluation (recall quality, sync robustness,
rebuild-from-files, malformed-file behavior).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The ~/.claude/ directory was previously local-only — a machine wipe
would have lost the accumulated memory, custom skills, and settings.
This commit moves the durable parts into dotfiles with the same
symlink-to-home pattern used for CLAUDE.md, PENDING.md, REVIEWED.md,
and L2-BOOTSTRAP.md.
Preserved (symlinked from ~/.claude/* into here):
skills/audit/ — thinking-folder drift scanner
skills/symmetria/ — practice-of-return discipline
skills/vault-update-people/ — Obsidian People-file maintainer
skills/wake-up/ — session restoration
skills/wrap-up/ — session state capture
memory/ — 55+ memory files (MEMORY.md, sessions,
ledgers, project state, feedback, etc.)
settings/settings.json — user preferences (hooks, flags, no secrets)
Deliberately NOT backed up:
settings.local.json — contains operational secrets (HF_TOKEN,
SSH password in expect scripts); by naming
convention, *.local.* is not synced.
Needs separate review and probable rotation.
sessions/, history.jsonl, caches, telemetry — ephemeral
plugins/, marketplace skills and agents — reinstallable
The working copies at ~/.claude/skills/* and
~/.claude/projects/-Users-davidglidden/memory are symlinks into this
directory, so every write flows here automatically. install.sh
recreates the symlinks on a fresh machine.
FOLLOW-ON (flagged, not in this commit):
settings.local.json contains a HuggingFace token and an SSH password
as plaintext strings inside allowed Bash command patterns. These
should be rotated and moved to secure storage (keychain / pass /
env file outside the settings file).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
