---
name: dream
description: Memory consolidation ("dreaming") for Claude's file-based memory in this project. Replays recent sessions, extracts what should change future behavior, merges related memories, updates stale ones, prunes the rest and rewrites MEMORY.md. Use on /dream, "consolidate memory", or at the end of a long working day.
---

# Dream: consolidate memory

The brain replays the day during sleep, keeps what matters, generalizes, and wakes up fresh. This skill does the same for Claude's memory directory. It is built from the wiki's own synthesis: [[concepts/memory-consolidation]], [[concepts/agent-memory]], [[concepts/human-vs-ai-memory]], [[concepts/knowledge-rot]].

## Principles (from the wiki)

| Principle | Source |
|---|---|
| **Replay before writing.** Consolidation works on the day's actual experience, not on a guess about it. | Hippocampal replay ([[episodes/langtalks--60-brain-memory]]) |
| **Distill, don't hoard.** A growing stack of notes that gets reread every morning is the failure mode. Each memory must change future behavior. | Gilad Levi ([[episodes/explainable--164-gilad-levi-continual-learning]]) |
| **Learn from corrections.** Compare what Claude did with what the user changed, rejected or redid, and infer the rule. | Nightly correction job ([[episodes/langtalks--72-personal-assistant-agent]]) |
| **Merge episodes into general truths.** Several small session memories become one general rule. Digest *and* discard. | Itamar Friedman ([[episodes/langtalks--57-memory]]) |
| **Frequency over recency.** Resolve conflicts by how often and how consistently something held, not by which came last. Never overwrite silently. | Mem0 critique ([[episodes/langtalks--60-brain-memory]]) |
| **Earn your place.** A rule that isn't used or keeps getting overridden gets changed or deleted. | Usage/acceptance test ([[episodes/langtalks--57-memory]]) |
| **Fight rot.** Dropped projects, renamed files and finished work keep resurfacing unless someone says so. | Dana Maman ([[episodes/osim-tochna--second-brain-and-llm-wiki]]) |
| **Stay inspectable.** Plain-language files the user can read and veto. | [[episodes/langtalks--57-memory]] |

## Steps

### 0. Load
Memory lives at `~/.claude/projects/<cwd with / replaced by ->/memory/` (the replay header prints it). Read `MEMORY.md` and every memory file. The format and the four types (`user`, `feedback`, `project`, `reference`) are defined in the system prompt's memory section. Follow it exactly.

### 1. Replay
Run `uv run tools/dream_replay.py`. It prints each human prompt since the last dream, after the tail of what Claude said just before, so a short "no, too heavy" reads in context. Use `--since YYYY-MM-DD` to widen the window. If it prints nothing, skip to step 4.

### 2. Extract
Go through the replay and list candidates. Look for:
- **Corrections:** "no", "not like that", "still not it", rejected tool calls, a redo after Claude's attempt. Write them as `feedback`, with **Why** and **How to apply**.
- **Confirmed approaches:** the user accepted an unusual choice without pushback, or picked one option out of several. These are `feedback` too. Don't record only failures.
- **Preferences and identity:** language, tone, review style, role. Write them as `user`.
- **Decisions and constraints:** what the project is for, what was ruled out and why. Write them as `project`, with absolute dates.
- **Pointers:** dashboards, URLs, artifacts the user will come back to. Write them as `reference`.

Salience test: *would a future session act differently knowing this?* If not, drop it. Also drop anything the repo already records (code, git history, CLAUDE.md, the wiki itself), one-off task details, and secrets.

### 3. Consolidate
For each candidate:
- **An existing memory covers it:** update that file. Repeated instances strengthen it: generalize the wording and note the evidence ("seen in 3 sessions").
- **New:** write a new file with frontmatter, and link related memories with `[[name]]`.
- **Conflicts with an existing memory:** keep the one with more and more-consistent evidence. If the user explicitly reversed themselves, the reversal wins. If it's genuinely unclear, keep both in the file under `**Open:**` and ask in the report.

### 4. Update
- Verify every file, function, flag or path a memory names still exists (`ls`, `grep`). Fix it or drop it.
- Convert relative dates ("tomorrow", "next week") to absolute ones.
- Update `project` memories whose status changed (shipped, abandoned, superseded).

### 5. Prune
Delete memories that are contradicted, obsolete (finished or abandoned work), duplicated by a merge, or that never mattered. Never delete a `feedback` memory the user stated explicitly unless they reversed it. List every deletion in the report.

### 6. Wake up fresh
- Rewrite `MEMORY.md`: one line per memory (`- [Title](file.md) — hook`), grouped by type, no memory content in it.
- Run `uv run tools/dream_replay.py --stamp` to record this dream, so the next replay starts here.

### 7. Report
Reply with a short table, *Added / Updated / Merged / Pruned*, one line each with the memory name, followed by any open questions. The memory directory is outside the repo, so there's nothing to commit. Don't touch `wiki/` or `raw/`.

## Scheduling
Dreaming fits a nightly run, when compute is idle and cheaper ([[episodes/langtalks--57-memory]]). It can be added to the existing launchd job as `claude -p "/dream"`, but only when the user asks.