Dream — Memory consolidation

Replicate Anthropic's Dream feature. Consolidate the auto-memory so Claude gets smarter the longer it runs, not noisier.

Scope

DEFAULT  → current project's memory dir
all      → every project memory dir under ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/
<slug>   → a specific project, e.g. /dream -Users-you-Code-myproject

Memory lives per-project (no user-global memory.md in this setup):

MEMDIR="$HOME/.claude/projects/<project-slug>/memory"

Resolve current project slug from cwd: replace / with - in the absolute path (e.g. /Users/you/Code/myproject → -Users-you-Code-myproject).

The hard constraint

MEMORY.md is loaded into context every session. The harness truncates it past a ~24.4KB byte limit (NOT a line count).

Truncation already observed: "MEMORY.md is 34.3KB (limit: 24.4KB) — only part of it was loaded."

Primary win = get MEMORY.md under 24KB by shortening over-long index lines and moving detail into topic files. Each index entry: one line, under ~150 chars.

Procedure — 4 steps

1. Read existing memory

• Read $MEMDIR/MEMORY.md (the index)
• List $MEMDIR/*.md topic files; read any whose index line is suspect (duplicate/stale/contradiction candidates) — don't blind-read all if the dir is huge

2. Ground-truth against recent sessions

• Read the last ~5 session transcripts: ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/*.jsonl (newest by mtime)
• Skim for: facts that changed, decisions reversed, projects gone dormant, paths that moved
• Goal: does memory match what the user actually does now?

3. Identify issues (report before changing)

Classify every problem found:

4. Consolidate

• Merge duplicate topic files; update/remove their index lines
• Resolve contradictions (newer wins; cite transcript evidence in the kept file)
• Fix all relative dates → absolute (today = run date)
• Prune stale/wrong-bucket files (delete file + index line)
• Trim MEMORY.md index: every line one-liner <150 chars, detail lives in topic .md
• Re-check byte size: wc -c "$MEMDIR/MEMORY.md" must be < 24400 bytes. If still over, keep trimming the longest index lines.

Safety

• Self-edit prompt: editing files inside .claude/ triggers a settings-edit permission ask even on bypass — expected, allow it.
• Never invent facts to "fill gaps" — consolidate only what exists.
• Never delete a topic file whose fact is still live just to save bytes — trim the index line instead.
• Show the issue list (step 3) to the user before destructive merges/prunes if running interactively. In autonomous/cron runs, proceed and report.
• Back up first: cp -r "$MEMDIR" "$MEMDIR.bak-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M)" then prune the .bak after the user confirms.

Output (terse)

Dream — <project-slug>
MEMORY.md: 34.3KB → 22.1KB (under 24.4KB limit ✓)
- merged: N files
- contradictions resolved: N
- dates fixed: N
- pruned: N
- index lines trimmed: N
Backup: memory.bak-YYYYMMDD-HHMM

Frequency

On-the-margin play — run when MEMORY.md nears the limit, or monthly. Optional cron:

0 9 1 * * cd <your-main-project> && claude --no-interactive "/dream"