Expand the documentation with measured figures and operational detail
Most of this replaces "roughly 550 characters per tool" with the actual per-tool measurements, and fills in the parts a reader hits after the happy path: what a specific error means, what a setting costs, what is not covered. Measured rather than estimated: - Per-tool byte cost, all fourteen, and the per-set totals. 7,673 B for the full set, averaging 548. - Builtin skill bodies at 5,284 B against a 681 B catalogue, which is the argument for loading bodies on demand. - Full system prompt 3,571 chars, core-only 2,045. New sections: - tools: which sets to keep and why, the jail function itself, an output-cap table, and the real error strings for edit_file and multi_edit. - configuration: env var per provider preset, cost-estimate limits, what each --no-* flag isolates, and three settings that do more than they look like. - agents: step caps per variant, which variant to reach for, and the fact that reasoning is charged as output and discarded first by compaction. - headless: exit code 0 means "the turn completed", not "the answer was yes" — with the jq pattern for gating on content. Timeouts, concurrent -c runs fighting over one session, CI recipes for --no-skills. - mcp: parallel connect, startup cost, a debugging ladder, and that toolSets does not gate MCP tools. - registry: publishing, local testing over http://localhost, and a troubleshooting section keyed on the actual validator messages. - memory: what compaction discards in what order, /compact versus automatic pruning, and that -c matches on cwd. - skills: the frontmatter reader's limits, and how to verify a skill loaded. Corrections found while cross-checking against the source: - The guard table was missing --force-with-lease and > /dev/sd… - The done event's token fields are optional, so the jq example filters on one rather than assuming it. Two honest limits now written down: the guard matches command strings, so a base64-decoded or script-wrapped command is not caught; and a registry index is trusted for its contents, not its authorship. Verified: all internal links and heading anchors resolve, every docs/ page is reachable from the README, 538 tests pass, typecheck clean.
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@@ -13,6 +13,9 @@ The split exists because compaction is destructive. `pruneMessages` deletes tool
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`/compact` deletes the whole transcript, so anything recorded only in messages is lost
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exactly when a long task needs it most.
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The practical rule: if it should survive this turn, `todo_write` it. If it should survive this
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session, `remember` it. The transcript is for the conversation, not for storage.
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## Project memory
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Durable notes about the codebase, injected at the start of every session.
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@@ -32,11 +35,21 @@ text one self-contained line
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Duplicates are refused. Text is capped at 400 characters, the store at 300 entries.
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The kinds are not decoration: they are what the model reads back at boot, and they set how much
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to trust a note. A `command` is verifiable in one run. A `decision` explains why the obvious
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alternative was not taken, which is the thing a newcomer most often gets wrong.
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"One self-contained line" is the part that matters most. A note reading "use the new approach"
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is worthless next session — there is no conversation left to say which approach.
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### `recall`
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Every term must appear. A match increments that entry's hit count, which protects it from
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compaction later — an entry the agent actually uses is worth keeping verbatim.
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AND rather than OR, on purpose: "migration seed order" should find the one note about that,
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not every note mentioning any of the three words. Returns the 15 most recent matches.
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### `forget`
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Removes by substring, for a note that turned out wrong.
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@@ -61,7 +74,9 @@ memory goes stale and a confidently wrong note is worse than none.
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- Entries with at least one recall are kept verbatim and never merged.
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- A model returning nothing parseable leaves the store untouched.
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Without the second rule a bad response wipes everything the agent has learned.
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Without the second rule a bad response wipes everything the agent has learned. The store also
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has to be past 60 entries with at least two unused ones before anything happens, so `/memory`
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on a small store is a deliberate no-op rather than a rewrite.
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`/notes` lists the store with hit counts. `--no-memory` disables loading and writing.
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@@ -118,6 +133,14 @@ shiro -r 0193ab2c # by id or unique prefix
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A corrupt session file is skipped rather than crashing the list.
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Ids are UUIDv7, so they sort by creation time and a prefix is usually enough to identify one.
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`-c` matches on `cwd`, so it picks up the newest session **for this directory** rather than the
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newest overall — two projects side by side do not steal each other's `-c`.
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Resuming restores the messages and the task list, but not the model or agent variant: those come
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from the current config and flags. A session started with `--agent deep` resumes as `default`
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unless you pass it again.
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## Compaction
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Two mechanisms.
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@@ -130,9 +153,24 @@ screen stays complete. The turn reports it:
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context compacted: 192 messages pruned to 15 on the wire
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```
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The status bar warns before that happens: context is shown as a percentage of the threshold,
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amber from two thirds, red at 90.
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What gets discarded, in order: reasoning items first, then tool calls and their results older
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than the last three messages. Reasoning is the cheapest thing to lose — it was progress, not
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conclusions — and tool results are the bulkiest. Recent exchanges are always kept, which is what
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lets a turn continue rather than restart.
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**Manual**, `/compact`: the model writes a summary — goal, files touched, decisions, commands
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and outcomes, what remains — and it replaces the transcript entirely.
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The difference is which history is destroyed. Automatic pruning touches the wire only, so
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scrolling back still shows everything and `/save` records everything. `/compact` replaces the
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real message array, so it is irreversible for that session.
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Use `/compact` when a session has drifted across several unrelated tasks and the early part is
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noise. Let automatic pruning handle a single long task, since it keeps the recent work intact.
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### The pruning repair
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Pruning breaks two provider invariants. `src/prune.ts` repairs both, and both were real 400s
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@@ -171,6 +209,16 @@ and the `tool` message answering it:
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alone deliberately: a tool call still waiting for its result is what a suspended approval looks
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like, and dropping it would break `/resume`.
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### What compaction still does not do
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It tells the model the history was pruned but not what was in it. A decision from forty messages
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ago can be contradicted with confidence, because from the model's side that span never existed.
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Summarising the discarded part is [next on the list](../TODO.md).
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The threshold is also measured with `JSON.stringify(messages).length / 4`, which is an estimate.
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It is fine for deciding when to prune and wrong enough that it should not be read as a token
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count — the real numbers in `/cost` come from the provider.
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## Prompt history
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Per-directory, capped at 200, deduplicated against the previous entry. Up and down in the
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