David F GliddenandClaude Opus 5
5c4055a071
MEMORY.md 20,413 -> 16,887 B (19.9 -> 16.5 KB), steward-directed at the 2026-08-06 evening wrap after three deferrals. Relocation, not deletion, and verified as such: 0 dead pointers, 0 orphaned clauses, every dropped backticked span traced to a home elsewhere in the corpus. Method, derived rather than felt: an entry keeps its rule inline when it fires at a moment I would not recognise as needing a lookup (spelling, quotation, "am I deferring?"); it shrinks to a pointer when the trigger is loud enough that the file gets opened anyway (chamber work, L1 work, a jurist package); and a ⚠ constraint always travels with the workaround it limits, never relocated away from it. The mechanical diff of dropped spans caught two losses that re-reading did not: `feedback-constitution-as-block-then-pull-based-corpus` dropped by inattention (a fires-silently rule — restored), and the facet-formalism pointer for the V1-purpose decision, which existed ONLY on the index line being compressed. That second one is `removing-a-claim-is-not-removing-the-reliance` exactly: the open decision would have stayed live with its formalism unfindable. Relocated into project-chamber-versioned-releases.md, its canonical surface, rather than back into the index. project-studium-engine.md — NEW, and the gap MEMORY.md itself had flagged as "no tracker file yet". The engine's state had been living inline in the index (one 950-character line pointing at the charter, a constitutional document that holds no build state) plus per-session memories: two update surfaces and no canonical one. Now holds current state, a chronological log, and the open-thread stack captured mid-session so the day's accumulation cannot be lost. MemPalace wind-down relocated to MEMORY-reference.md — a workstream closed 2026-07-07 whose one live clause (the typography-palace exception) is carried by a standing preference that stays wake-loaded. session-2026-08-06-evening: the claim that Alexander's rating classes "compare as identical" under @3 is marked SUPERSEDED and false. Measured while landing the fix: old @3 gave COMPOST\ , COMPOST\\ , COMPOST — three distinct strings. The ratings never collided; the real defect ran the opposite way, corrupting the rating into a backslash residue and causing false REFUSALS. I carried that generalisation into the record from the package's Part III(a) without checking it against the package's own Part I table, which printed the refutation. session-ledger-2026-08-07: the day's returns, including that every defect found today was found by a COUNT rather than a read — the dropped-span diff, the span-count-versus-store (769 unreachable drawers), the adapter comparison (3 of 253) — and that twice the instrument itself was at fault in the more dangerous direction, failing healthy data in a way that invites editing the data to satisfy the checker. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NEWjLBP4quXbDPDL2byEzZ
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.