David F GliddenandClaude Opus 5
2171d9127e
The wake reported MEMORY.md at 26,803 bytes against a 24,986-byte budget, so the
index was being silently truncated at load — the failure the two-file split exists
to prevent, on the one file every session reads first.
The cause was not bulk. It was an inversion the file's own Index discipline section
forbids: "Canonical Trackers as one-line pointers — chronological detail lives in
the linked tracker files, not here." Five tracker entries had grown into paragraphs,
and for three of them the index had become the SOLE custodian of live state:
- Studium Engine: the tracker's chronological log stopped at 2026-08-13 while the
index carried engine state through 2026-09-01 (REVIEWED-133, 496cd7e, the
deleted undisclosed_days_in_force). Relocated verbatim as a dated log entry.
- The Fool (Tarbuckle): the only linked target was a SEALED seed, which is not a
place state may be appended, so there was nowhere for it to go. Tracker
established (project-fool-tarbuckle.md); index line relocated verbatim.
- L1 reliability: the tracker records that replay is "not resumable" but neither
the mechanism (minCursor is a minimum over 11 modules, two never participate, so
it is pinned at 0 by construction) nor the completion criterion (uninterrupted
run length, not rate). Both appended.
Cut only where the file's own rule says to cut. "Rules that fire silently" was left
untouched by design — those entries keep their rule inline precisely because I would
not know to look them up, and gutting them is the one cut that would do real harm.
The frozen verification-ladder pointer (REVIEWED-123) and the skill-harvest hold
(PENDING-141) were likewise not touched.
Lossless-relocation gate applied: line-range slices, never retyping; md5 per slice;
token-conservation check over all five originals against the trimmed index and the
relocation targets — 0 unconserved after the L1 append. Link canary: 406 pointers,
0 dead, 0 mis-authored; 32 wikilinks clean.
26,803 -> 23,714 bytes. Headroom is only 1.3 KB; the Active Session block still
carries ~5.5 KB that the wrap rotates.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X3L79vgAnt1x2kxvf23Qt7
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.