Recall — Find What Was Said

When Joel references something vaguely, don’t guess — fan out across all memory sources and find it.

Trigger Detection

Phrases that indicate a recall is needed (case-insensitive):

• “from earlier”, “earlier today”, “earlier this week”
• “remember when”, “remember that”, “you mentioned”
• “what we discussed”, “what we talked about”, “the conversation about”
• “that thing with”, “the thing about”, “what was that”
• “did we ever”, “have we”, “wasn’t there”
• “last session”, “the other day”, “yesterday”
• “correlate with”, “connect to what we”
• Any vague pronoun reference to past context (“those photos”, “that idea”, “the notes”)

Key principle: If you’d have to guess what “earlier” or “that” refers to, you need recall.

Fan-Out Search Pattern

Search these sources in parallel where possible, with timeouts on each:

1. Today’s Daily Log (fastest, most likely)

# Always check first — most "from earlier" references are same-day
cat ~/.joelclaw/workspace/memory/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md

2. Recent Daily Logs (if today’s doesn’t have it)

# Yesterday and day before
cat ~/.joelclaw/workspace/memory/$(date -v-1d +%Y-%m-%d).md
cat ~/.joelclaw/workspace/memory/$(date -v-2d +%Y-%m-%d).md

3. Curated Memory

cat ~/.joelclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md

Search for keywords from the vague reference.

4. Session Transcripts

Use the session_context tool to search recent sessions:

sessions(limit: 10)  # find recent session IDs
session_context(session_id: "...", query: "what was discussed about <topic>")

5. Vault Notes

# Keyword search across Vault
grep -ri "<keywords>" ~/Vault/ --include="*.md" -l | head -10

6. System Log

slog tail --count 20  # recent infrastructure changes

7. Processed Media

# Check for images/audio that were processed
ls /tmp/joelclaw-media/ 2>/dev/null

8. Redis State

# Memory proposals, loop state, etc.
redis-cli LRANGE memory:review:pending 0 -1 2>/dev/null

Workflow

1. Extract keywords from the vague reference. “Those photos from earlier” → keywords: photos, images, media, telegram.
2. Fan out across sources 1-8 above. Use timeout 5 on any command that might hang.
3. Synthesize — combine findings into a coherent summary of what was found.
4. Present context — show Joel what you found, then continue with the original task.
5. If nothing found — say so honestly. Don’t fabricate. Ask Joel to clarify.

Timeouts Are Mandatory

Every external call (Redis, grep over large dirs, session reads) MUST have a timeout. The gateway session cannot hang on a recall operation.

# Good
timeout 5 grep -ri "keyword" ~/Vault/ --include="*.md" -l | head -10

# Bad — can hang indefinitely
grep -ri "keyword" ~/Vault/ --include="*.md"

Anti-Patterns

• Don’t grep one file and call it done. The whole point is fan-out.
• Don’t guess when recall fails. Say “I couldn’t find it” and ask.
• Don’t read entire session transcripts. Use session_context with a focused query.
• Don’t skip media. Photos, audio, processed images in /tmp/joelclaw-media/ are often what “from earlier” refers to.