Review Working Memory

Review Working Memory

Understand what knowledge wm has captured and what context is currently active.

Platform Support:

• ✅ Claude Code - Full support (session discovery works)
• ✅ Codex - Partial support (state/working set work, session listing limited)

When to Use

• Session start — Review what patterns and constraints wm knows about this project
• Before major changes — Check if existing knowledge suggests an approach
• Debugging unexpected behavior — See if wm is injecting context that's affecting decisions
• After distillation — Verify what knowledge was extracted
• Planning work — Understand project patterns before designing solution

What to Review

1. Current State (wm show state)

View all accumulated tacit knowledge:

wm show state

What you'll see:

• Rationale behind past decisions
• Constraints discovered through work
• Preferences revealed by corrections
• Patterns followed in this project
• Paths rejected and why

This is the "long-term memory" — knowledge accumulated across all sessions.

2. Active Context (wm show working)

View what context was last injected:

wm show working                      # Global working set
wm show working --session-id <id>   # Session-specific working set

What you'll see:

• Filtered subset of state.md relevant to last intent
• What context Claude received on last turn
• Useful for debugging: "Why is Claude suggesting X?"

This is the "short-term memory" — what's active in current context.

3. All Sessions (wm show sessions)

Claude Code only:

List all sessions for this project:

wm show sessions

What you'll see:

• Session IDs and timestamps
• Transcript locations
• Useful for running distillation or reviewing history

Note: In Codex, session listing requires manual discovery:

ls ~/.codex/sessions/2026/01/*/rollout-*.jsonl

4. Dive Context (wm dive show)

View current dive session context (if active):

wm dive show

What you'll see:

• Intent (fix, plan, explore, review, ship)
• Focus (what specifically you're working on)
• Constraints from guardrails or .superego/
• Workflow steps for this intent
• Context sources (local, git, OH, etc.)

Example Workflow

# Starting new work - review what wm knows
wm show state

# Output shows:
# - "Prefer functional composition over inheritance"
# - "API calls require retry logic (flaky network)"
# - "Use snake_case for file names in this project"

# Now you understand the project patterns before coding

Integration with Other Commands

Review → Distill

# Check current state
wm show state

# Seems sparse - run distillation
wm distill

# Review again
wm show state

Review → Compress

# Check state size
wm show state | wc -l
# Output: 87 lines

# Too large - compress
wm compress

# Review result
wm show state | wc -l
# Output: 34 lines

Review → Dive Prep

# Review project knowledge
wm show state

# Now prepare focused dive with that context in mind
/dive-prep --intent fix

Understanding State vs Working Set

State.md (Long-term Memory):

• All accumulated knowledge
• May contain items not relevant to current task
• Read with: wm show state

Working Set (Short-term Memory):

• Filtered for current intent
• Only relevant items injected to Claude
• Read with: wm show working

Example:

If state.md contains:

- Prefer functional style over OOP
- API calls need retry logic
- Use PostgreSQL for persistence
- Frontend uses React hooks pattern

And your intent is "implement API retry logic", then working_set.md might contain:

- API calls need retry logic
- Prefer functional style over OOP

The PostgreSQL and React items weren't relevant to the intent, so they weren't injected.

Pause Status

Check if wm operations are paused:

wm status

Output:

Working Memory Status
=====================

Extract:  active
Compile:  active

All operations running normally.

Or if paused:

Extract:  PAUSED
Compile:  active

Extract is paused. Run 'wm resume extract' to re-enable.

When to Use Each Command

Command	When to Use
wm show state	Understand accumulated project knowledge
wm show working	Debug what context was injected
wm show sessions	Find sessions for distillation or audit
wm dive show	Review current dive context
wm status	Check if operations are paused

Agent Usage

As an agent, invoke this skill when you need to:

• Understand project patterns before suggesting approach
• Debug why certain context is appearing
• Verify knowledge was captured after distillation
• Check if dive context is active