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. Brain-backed recall (fastest broad cut)

joelclaw recall "<keywords>" --limit 10

joelclaw recall queries disposable observations and brain_graph_nodes projections. Brain .svx is canonical; the retired memory_observations collection is not a source.

2. Session transcripts

joelclaw sessions search "<keywords>" --source both --limit 10 --extract

Use raw local/SSH fallback when the derived Typesense session index is stale.

3. Brain notes

rg -l -i "<keywords>" ~/.brain --glob '*.svx' | head -20

Read the strongest matching pages, not the whole Brain.

4. Vault notes

timeout 5 grep -ri "<keywords>" ~/Vault/ --include="*.md" -l | head -10

5. Runtime telemetry and events

joelclaw otel search "<keywords>" --hours 24
joelclaw events --hours 24 --count 100

The former slog/system-log JSONL journal is retired.

6. Processed media

ls /tmp/joelclaw-media/ 2>/dev/null

7. Active runtime state (only when the reference is about live work)

joelclaw loop list
joelclaw runs --count 20 --hours 24

Do not query retired memory-proposal Redis queues.

Workflow

1. Extract keywords from the vague reference. "Those photos from earlier" → keywords: photos, images, media, telegram.
2. Fan out across the relevant sources 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.