Memory consolidation — distills session learnings and transcripts into persistent memory files
Consolidates session learnings and accumulated context into the persistent memory system
(~/.claude/memory/). Run when the ember gate fires (heartbeat will notify you) or manually
at any time to refresh memory with recent work.
Without distillation, session learnings accumulate in context/learnings.md but never get
promoted to the global memory system that persists across projects. The memory index grows
stale. Future sessions start with outdated context.
ember-due flag (automatic — run /distill to clear it)context/learnings.md has grown significantly since the last distillationBefore writing anything, survey the current memory landscape:
ls ~/.claude/memory/
cat ~/.claude/memory/MEMORY.md
Read the MEMORY.md index. Skim 2-3 of the most relevant topic files to understand what's already there. Avoid duplicating entries that already exist.
Collect signal from three sources, in priority order:
For each entry, ask: is this general enough to be useful outside this project, or is it project-specific? General → global memory. Project-specific → project memory file.
Write or update memory files:
Use the standard memory frontmatter format:
---