Memory Loader, Session Start Protocol

MANDATORY at the start of every substantive session. Verifies vault infrastructure, loads memory, and gets the agent oriented before any work begins. If you find yourself working without having run this, STOP and run it.

This protocol is a token-budget rewrite. An earlier version read far more per session than it needed, and two of its reads were being silently truncated by the per-file cap, so it paid full price for half the information. Every read below is bounded, and the total is kept small.

When to use

Start of every substantive session; a new conversation with a chat-based agent; resuming after any gap; when the user pastes a "Read memory at..." prompt; when context seems missing or stale; when switching projects mid-session.

Cross-platform

Same protocol everywhere, one directory per agent: each agent reads and writes only agents/<agent>/. An agent on a platform that cannot load this file inlines a compact version at the top of its own identity file. This file is the canonical reference. Vault root: <HOME>/Documents/<NOTES_ROOT>/.