athola/session-palace-builder

Table of Contents

• What It Is
• Quick Start
• Mental Model
• When to Use
• Session Palace Templates
• Information Categories
• Core Workflow
• Session Lifecycle
• Clarity Checkpoints
• Detailed Resources
• Integration
• Exit Criteria

Session Palace Builder

Construct temporary, session-specific memory palaces for extended conversations and complex projects. Preserves context across interruptions and enables structured information accumulation.

What It Is

Session palaces are lightweight, temporary memory structures that:

• Preserve context for extended conversations
• Track decisions and their rationale
• Organize project artifacts spatially
• Enable context recovery after interruptions
• Support collaborative information gathering

Quick Start

Build Commands

```bash

Run build

make build

Clean and rebuild

make clean && make build ```

Testing

```bash

Run tests

make test

Run with verbose output

make test VERBOSE=1 ```

Verification: Run make build && make test to confirm build works.

When To Use

• Extended conversations requiring context preservation
• Complex, multi-step projects with interrelated components
• Workflows requiring state management across interactions
• Collaborative sessions accumulating information over time
• Code review or debugging sessions with many findings

When NOT To Use

• Permanent knowledge structures needed - use memory-palace-architect
• Searching existing knowledge
  • use knowledge-locator
• Permanent knowledge structures needed - use memory-palace-architect
• Searching existing knowledge
  • use knowledge-locator

Session Palace Templates

| Template | Purpose | Key Areas | |----------|---------|-----------| | Workshop | Active development | Workbench, tools, materials | | Library | Research and analysis | Stacks, reading room, archives | | Council Chamber | Decision-making | Round table, evidence wall, vote board | | Observatory | Exploration and discovery | Telescope, star charts, log book | | Forge | Implementation tasks | Anvil, cooling rack, finished goods |

Information Categories

Organize session content into these standard areas:

• Conversations - Dialogue threads and key exchanges
• Decisions - Choices made with rationale
• Code - Snippets and technical artifacts
• Research - Findings and references
• Requirements - Specifications and constraints
• Progress - Completed milestones
• Issues - Blockers and challenges
• Next Steps - Pending action items

Core Workflow

1. Analyze Context - Assess session scope and complexity
2. Design Palace - Select template and layout
3. Structure State - Organize information spatially
4. Build Navigation - Create access shortcuts
5. Test Integration - Verify context preservation

Session Lifecycle

Create → Populate → Navigate → Export/Archive
   ↑         ↓          ↓
   └─── Checkpoint ←────┘

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Clarity Checkpoints

A session palace decays silently: each Populate step can add ambiguity that only surfaces at Export, when it is too late to recover the lost state. MMPO (arXiv:2605.30159, Section 3) frames this as a case for sub-trajectory dense rewards: check intermediate quality at each transition, not just the final outcome.

At every Checkpoint arrow in the lifecycle above (and before any Export/Archive), run the dual-probe gate against the current palace state:

Skill(memory-palace:memory-clarity-probe)

The probe returns a Clarity Assessment with progress/gap verdicts and a Recommendation:

| Recommendation | Action at the checkpoint | |----------------|--------------------------| | Proceed | Palace state is clear; continue the session | | Expand memory | Add the gap probe's open items to the palace before continuing | | Regenerate | Flag the session as ambiguous: the progress probe hedges, so reconstruct the current-state room before more work lands on it |

Flagging at the checkpoint, not at export, is the point: an ambiguous palace caught early costs one room rebuild; caught at export it costs the session.

When memory-clarity-probe is not installed, ask the two anchor questions inline (progress: what is done and what state is the task in; gap: what concrete items remain) and apply the same table.

Detailed Resources

• Template Details: See modules/templates.md
• State Management: See modules/templates.md
• Export Patterns: See modules/templates.md

Integration

• memory-palace-architect - Export important concepts to permanent palaces
• knowledge-locator - Search session content
• digital-garden-cultivator - Seed garden with session insights
• memory-clarity-probe - Dual-probe clarity gate at session checkpoints

Exit Criteria

• [ ] A session palace is created with a template and spatial layout before any state is populated
• [ ] The dual-probe clarity gate runs at each Checkpoint transition and before Export/Archive, not only at the end
• [ ] A checkpoint returning Expand memory or Regenerate is acted on (gap items added or current-state room rebuilt) before more work lands, and the ambiguous session is flagged
• [ ] Exported concepts round-trip into a permanent palace via memory-palace-architect