David F Glidden
1ebaf6aba5
First run of the reduction arm. Result: 4 of 47 assertive units survive. D=0, Q=0, A=0 — in a real jurist ruling not one unit is demonstrated-in-document and not one is a verbatim quote from a declared axiom source. Census: PERFORMATIVE 12, BLEND 9, UNSOURCED-FACT 8, TESTIMONY 6, INHERITED 4, UNSOURCED-QUOTE 3, PARAPHRASE 1. §6.1 asked whether a heavy quarantine means the kernel is too strict or our prose is full of unmarked assumptions. The census says neither: PERFORMATIVE and TESTIMONY are 42% of quarantines and are categories the kernel has NO TAG FOR. 'Design gate PASSED' is not an undemonstrated claim, it is a determination true by being uttered; 'I read CLAUDE.md in full' is testimony. A ruling that neither performed nor testified would not be a ruling. So the finding is a GENRE BOUNDARY — v1.0 models argumentative prose, a ruling is authoritative prose — and that boundary is nowhere stated in the kernel. Three gaps, one genre-independent: TESTIMONY, PERFORMATIVE, and PARAPHRASE. PARAPHRASE is the one that matters — Q demands verbatim, and any document reasoning from sources in its own words is untypeable. Plus a fourth, structural: the §1 axiom set is too narrow to reduce anything real (12 of 43 quarantines are UNSOURCED-* or PARAPHRASE). Deepest finding: §2c is satisfiable BY CONSTRUCTION but not BY REDUCTION. Splitting a blend means rewriting someone else's sentence, which is where translator bias lives. At 91.5% that is not reduction, it is authoring a new document with the original as a prompt — so on this genre the reduction arm COLLAPSES INTO the synthetic arm, inheriting its confirmation bias without its convenience. The two arms were adopted because they fail differently; that is the property at risk. n=1 and stated as such. The package genre splits to 109 taggable units and is NOT tagged. Falsifiable prediction recorded before the census: its Part I is 'Grounding (quoted verbatim)' and quotes CLAUDE.md directly, so Q should be non-zero there where it was zero here. Tooling: reduce.py + test_reduce.py, every gate shown FAILING on a fixture built to break it. The splitter shipped with three defects, all found by contact with a real document and none by review — third instance in three days: a '##' inside a fence kinded as a heading, '---' rules taggable, and a '?' inside a quotation splitting a sentence into a FRAGMENT. Fixed at v1.1.0 with regression controls; the third fix's own risk (lower-case suppression) is recorded and controlled.
Claude Code configuration — backup & restore
This directory holds the durable Claude Code configuration that should survive a machine wipe: custom skills, accumulated memory, and user-level settings. The working copies at ~/.claude/* are symlinks pointing here, so edits flow both directions automatically.
What's preserved here
skills/ — custom skills we've authored
| Skill | Purpose |
|---|---|
audit/ |
Scans thinking folder + vault inbox for organizational drift; report-only |
symmetria/ |
Practice-of-return discipline; prime-directive foregrounding under context pressure |
vault-update-people/ |
Searches Obsidian vault for new mentions of a person; proposes People-file updates |
wake-up/ |
Restores full session context from memory, governance, and git at session start |
wrap-up/ |
Captures session state for future restoration; the quality of the next wake depends on this |
Marketplace-installed skills (from Claude Code plugins) are not backed up here — they are regenerable on any fresh install.
memory/ — auto-memory for the main project scope
The substrate of continuity. 55+ files including:
MEMORY.md— the index, loaded at every session startsession-2026-*.md— session records (full Dasein-frame wrap-ups: pulling thread, pause statement, literal question for next-Claude)session-ledger-*.md— Symmetria daily ledgers (returns, recalibrations, authorization moves, bypasses)project-*.md— active project state snapshots (ARC rework, Chamber, L2 review, etc.)feedback-*.md— steward preferences and corrections learned over time- Many others
Real path: ~/.claude/projects/-Users-davidglidden/memory/ symlinks here.
settings/settings.json — Claude Code user settings
Sanitized. Contains hook registrations (including the MemPalace auto-save hooks) and feature flags. No secrets.
mempalace/ — MemPalace setup files
The bootstrap configuration for MemPalace. These files live at ~/.mempalace/ but are also backed up here because they represent the accumulated understanding of who-is-who and what-is-what. The palace itself (~/_Dev/mempalace/.local-data/palace/, ~1GB) is NOT backed up — it's rebuildable by re-running mempalace mine against the same source data.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
config.json |
Palace path + default topic wings + hall keywords |
identity.txt |
L0 layer — loaded every session; ~100 tokens identifying who I am, who the steward is, intellectual substrate |
wing_config.json |
Named wings for real people and projects (wing_david, wing_nuria, wing_lune, wing_kai, wing_seb, wing_peter, wing_arc, wing_capablemind, wing_chamber, wing_afterthereply, wing_aldinexxi, wing_l2, wing_claude-code) |
The auto-save hooks (wired in settings/settings.json via Stop and PreCompact events) point at ~/_Dev/mempalace/hooks/mempal_save_hook.sh and mempal_precompact_hook.sh. If MemPalace is reinstalled elsewhere, update those paths.
What is deliberately NOT here
settings.local.json
Kept local-only because its permissions allowlist has historically contained operational secrets (HuggingFace tokens embedded in approved Bash commands; SSH passwords in approved expect scripts). The .local.json naming convention exists for exactly this reason.
Before backing any settings.local.json up anywhere, audit it for secrets and redact them.
Session transcripts (sessions/, history.jsonl, projects/*/sessions/)
Too large; ephemeral by design; not needed to restore identity.
Caches, telemetry, runtime state
cache/, file-history/, paste-cache/, telemetry/, statsig/, stats-cache.json, scheduled_tasks.lock, session-env/, mcp-needs-auth-cache.json, debug/, tasks/, todos/ — all regenerate naturally.
Marketplace-installed skills and agents
plugins/, and the many non-custom entries under skills/ and agents/ come from Claude Code's plugin system. Reinstallable on a fresh machine.
Restore procedure
On a fresh machine, after cloning dotfiles:
cd ~/dotfiles/claude
./install.sh
The install script:
- Verifies
~/dotfiles/claude/is present - Creates
~/.claude/skills/and~/.claude/projects/-Users-davidglidden/if missing - Symlinks each custom skill from
~/.claude/skills/X → ~/dotfiles/claude/skills/X - Symlinks the memory tree from
~/.claude/projects/-Users-davidglidden/memory → ~/dotfiles/claude/memory - Copies
settings.jsoninto place if no existing file (does not overwrite) - Skips anything already present — idempotent
After running: the first Claude Code session on the new machine has full memory, all custom skills, and baseline settings.
Why this matters
Without this backup, a machine wipe means:
- All session memory lost —
/wake-upwould have nothing to restore from - All custom skills lost — the practice-of-return discipline, session lifecycle, audit workflows
- The collaboration history with Claude Code loses its thread
The memory tree is the single most irreplaceable artifact — it accumulates through dialogue and cannot be reconstructed from any other source. 384 KB of text that represents months of learning about preferences, active projects, decisions, and open horizons.
Maintenance
These files are live. Claude Code writes to them during normal operation (ledger updates, memory file creation/edits, settings changes). Because the working copies at ~/.claude/* are symlinks into this directory, every write lands here automatically. Then git status in ~/dotfiles/ shows what's changed and invites a commit.
Recommended cadence: commit dotfiles/claude/ changes alongside other dotfiles work, roughly weekly or when a significant session has concluded. The /wrap-up skill should be treated as a natural commit moment for the memory tree.
Fragility to watch
- Symlinks break if
~/dotfiles/claude/is moved. Keep dotfiles at~/dotfiles/. - macOS Time Machine / backup tools may or may not follow symlinks. Verify your backup solution sees files, not just broken links.
- If Claude Code's internal path conventions change (e.g., the project-scope slug
-Users-davidgliddenchanges), the symlink stops pointing where Claude Code looks. Re-create with the new path.