MEMORY.md Temporal Head

Context

MEMORY.md began as a generated working-memory document stitched from session summary markdown files. That was useful as a stopgap, but it left three gaps:

1. stale content persisted because synthesis operated on flat files rather than scored database state
2. compaction artifacts were stored as loose memories instead of temporal first-class artifacts
3. the rendered file had no durable lineage back to the temporal graph that produced it

Issue #218 locked in the requirement that regeneration must be decay-aware, pin-aware, and budgeted by score rather than position. LCM research adds the missing temporal shape: transcript-derived leaves, higher-order condensed nodes, and drill-down lineage.

Contract

MEMORY.md is the rendered temporal head of Signet’s lossless working memory system.

• transcript context is retained losslessly in session_transcripts
• temporal abstractions are stored in session_summaries
• MEMORY.md is a materialized working document rendered from scored database state, not assembled from markdown files

The rendered document has two layers:

1. Operator-facing summary

   • active projects and threads
   • decisions and constraints
   • relevant people / relationships
   • open blockers and current technical notes

2. Machine-facing lineage

   • temporal node identifiers
   • provenance (summary, chunk, compaction, condensation)
   • parent/child traversal handles
   • transcript/session references for drill-down

Temporal Model

The existing session_summaries DAG remains the temporal backbone, but depth-0 artifacts are distinguished by provenance:

• summary — summary-worker session node
• chunk — transcript-derived leaf node
• compaction — harness compaction artifact
• condensation — arc/epoch nodes

Compaction artifacts are first-class temporal nodes. They do not overwrite session summaries.

Rendering Rules

• MEMORY.md is rendered from DB-backed candidate selection
• memories and temporal artifacts are ranked by decay-aware score
• pinned memories are exempt from decay
• under budget pressure, lowest-scoring items are dropped first
• empty sections disappear naturally instead of leaving dead scaffolding
• deep history stays in drill-down tools and temporal lineage, not in the visible summary body

Provider Resolution

MEMORY.md rendering must respect the current pipeline synthesis contract introduced in PR #335:

• explicit memory.pipelineV2.synthesis.* settings override defaults
• when the synthesis block is omitted, runtime inherits the resolved extraction provider/model/endpoint/timeout
• provider: none or enabled: false disables background synthesis
• deterministic portions of MEMORY.md rendering must continue to work even when LLM-backed synthesis is disabled

Integration Notes

• Depends on memory-pipeline-v2 and session-continuity-protocol
• Extends the temporal side of desire-paths-epic
• Must preserve agent scoping on all new temporal writes
• Rust parity work should follow once the TypeScript behavior is stable