David F Glidden
4408506ffa
Prediction recorded in Reduction 01 BEFORE this census, so it could fail: the
package's Part I is 'Grounding (quoted verbatim)' and quotes CLAUDE.md directly,
so Q should be non-zero where it was zero. Q=9. D=40, where the ruling had none.
ruling package
sound 8.5% 68.6%
PERFORMATIVE 12 0 <- the genre signature
BLEND 9 25
INHERITED 4 0
UNSOURCED-QUOTE 3 0 <- §1's header clause worked
Genre reading confirmed eightfold: a package proposes, a ruling determines.
CORRECTS Reduction 01's strong conclusion that 'the reduction arm collapses into
the synthetic arm'. On package prose repair touches 31.4%, not 91.5% — reduction,
not authoring, and the two arms stay distinct. That conclusion was correctly
bounded at n=1; the bound was the whole of its content and one document collapsed
it. Reduction 01 now carries the correction inline.
BLEND is now the blocker and is genre-independent: 25 of 33 quarantines, 7 of
them rows of the Part IV table, which pairs a quote with an end-state and a
verdict — three primitives by construction.
Two check findings, one good and one bad:
§3.2 CAUGHT A REAL TAGGING ERROR OF MINE. Unit 145 was tagged Q; it is a sentence
ABOUT a quotation, not a quotation, so not verbatim-as-a-unit. Corrected to D.
The check found it, the reading did not — the 'quoted but not traced' defect the
jurist caught on 2026-07-19, mechanised.
§3.3 GAVE A FALSE PASS, found by looking. Part VII 'Disconfirming evidence' IS a
collected limitations section under §2a — the exact section trial 03 showed the
model skipping wholesale — and the screen missed it because it never says
'limitations'. Widened; the package now correctly FAILS §3.3. But no pattern can
decide this: a section titled only 'Part VII' defeats any wordlist, and a control
now asserts that. §3.3 is a SCREEN, not a decision; §2a belongs in §4's judgement
residue. Fourth time in three days a passing check certified the code while the
property failed, and the fourth found by a person looking.
A=0 IN BOTH DOCUMENTS, and it is the same fact as the §2a failure seen from the
other side: we do not name assumptions inline, we collect them into a section.
Our best governance prose is written in exactly the shape that defeats the reader
the section was written for.
Also fixed: the tool was still printing 'NOT checked here: §3.2' after §3.2 was
implemented — under-claiming, but still a false statement about what ran.
Kernel v1.1 candidates are now evidence-backed and remain UNAPPLIED; v1.0 stays
frozen and a revision is a new experiment. The false-positive control remains
unrun and neither reduction produced a usable control document.
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.