continuum

Continuum

The thread that runs through every session.

Continuum is persistent memory for Claude Code. Your AI assistant remembers who you are, what you've decided, and the work you've done — across sessions, across compactions, across machines.

No embeddings. No LLM compression step. No MCP server. No workers. Just SQLite (FTS5 + trigram + Sørensen-Dice), two markdown files, a tiny CLI, and one Claude Code plugin.

   past ─────────────●──────●─●────────────●────●──── now ─────►
                     │      │ │            │    │
                     └──────┴─┴──flashbacks┴────┘
                                                    + SOUL  (identity)
                                                    + MEMORY (preferences)

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What it gives the agent at every session start

1. SOUL.md — your identity for this user (name, voice, values). Hand-curated. The agent boots already knowing who it is to you.
2. MEMORY.md — your living preferences, decisions, notes. Always in context. The agent edits this directly as you state preferences.
3. Flashbacks — DB-backed memory entries with title, body, tags, and links to other flashbacks. Last N titles + all pinned are injected; the rest is one CLI call away.
4. An operating manual — locked-in stance: assistant-first, fully agentic, trusts the user, doesn't break character.

A SessionStart hook stitches all of that into the agent's context on every fresh session, every /clear, and every auto-compaction.

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Install

Pick the path that matches how you use the tool.

A. Claude Code plugin (recommended)

Two commands inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add YusufLisawi/continuum
/plugin install continuum@continuum

The plugin auto-installs everything — SessionStart hook, the continuum skill, deps, and a symlinked continuum CLI in ~/.bun/bin (or ~/.local/bin) so you can run it from any terminal. No manual bun link. No build step.

B. One-line CLI install (no plugin)

For users who want just the CLI without the Claude Code integration:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YusufLisawi/continuum/main/install.sh | bash

That clones the repo to ~/.local/share/continuum, runs bun install, and symlinks continuum into a directory on your PATH. Override with env vars if you want it elsewhere:

CONTINUUM_DIR=~/code/continuum CONTINUUM_BIN=~/.local/bin \
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YusufLisawi/continuum/main/install.sh | bash

C. Local development

For working on continuum itself:

/plugin marketplace add /absolute/path/to/your/continuum/checkout
/plugin install continuum@continuum

Then create a live-link symlink that points at your local source:

printf '#!/bin/sh\nexec bun "$HOME/Developer/continuum/src/bin.ts" "$@"\n' > ~/.bun/bin/continuum
chmod +x ~/.bun/bin/continuum

Future /plugin install continuum@continuum runs preserve that dev symlink (the Setup hook detects symlinks pointing outside the plugin cache and leaves them alone). Edits to src/ are picked up immediately — no rebuild.

Requirement: bun must be on your PATH for any of the three paths above.

After install

continuum init        # scaffold ~/.continuum/
continuum --help

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Quickstart

continuum init                                            # scaffold ~/.continuum/
continuum add "We use bun:sqlite, not better-sqlite3" \
  --body "Built-in, no native build step, FTS5+trigram out of box." \
  --tags decision,stack
continuum search "sqlite"                                  # BM25 + fuzzy
continuum show 1                                            # full body + linked siblings
continuum preview                                           # see exact session-start injection

CLI surface

continuum init
continuum add "<title>" [--body "..."|--stdin] [--tags a,b] [--pin] [--link <id>]
continuum show <id> [--json] [--no-links]
continuum search "<q>" [--tag X] [--project Y] [--limit N] [--json]
continuum list [--limit N] [--tag X] [--project Y] [--pinned] [--json]
continuum link <src> <dst> --kind related|follows|contradicts|refines
continuum unlink <src> <dst> [--kind <k>]
continuum tag add|rm <id> <name>
continuum pin|unpin <id>
continuum rm <id>
continuum soul [print|edit]
continuum memory [print|edit]
continuum config get|set <key> [<value>]
continuum preview                            # what gets injected at SessionStart

How search works

Three signals merged, no embeddings:

Layer	Mechanism	Weight
FTS5 BM25	bm25(flashbacks_fts) over title+body, porter stemming	× 1.0
FTS5 trigram	substring match on title	× 0.5
Sørensen-Dice fuzzy	per-word JS bigram overlap, falls back when lexical is thin	× 0.5
Recency	exp(-age_days/30) × 0.2	additive
Pinned	+0.5	additive