todo: understand claude and opencode memory, then centralize into a vector db

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

TODO.md

@@ -21,10 +21,10 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 
 ## Themes
 
-**92 open, 30 closed**, across 31 themes.
+**93 open, 30 closed**, across 32 themes.
 
 | Theme                                                                                      | Open | Closed |
-| --- | --- | --- |
+| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---- | ------ |
 | [Affordances](todo/affordances/)                                                           | 2    | 0      |
 | [Agents coordinating agents](todo/agent-coordination/)                                     | 2    | 0      |
 | [Speaking into a session from the backend](todo/agent-delivery/)                           | 1    | 1      |
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 | [Headscale](todo/headscale/)                                                               | 0    | 5      |
 | [Infra (alpha)](todo/infra/)                                                               | 7    | 0      |
 | [Known bugs](todo/known-bugs/)                                                             | 4    | 3      |
+| [Memory — one store instead of per-harness files](todo/memory/)                            | 1    | 0      |
 | [Mobile apps](todo/mobile-apps/)                                                           | 3    | 0      |
 | [Multi-user](todo/multi-user/)                                                             | 16   | 5      |
 | [Notifications](todo/notifications/)                                                       | 1    | 0      |
@@ -69,10 +70,10 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 - `2026-08-25` **An affordance: a scoped agent warns when a request lands outside its scope** — [affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the](todo/affordances/an-affordance-a-scoped-agent-warns-on-the.md)
 - `2026-08-25` **Resurrect Projects/Apps** — [backburner/resurrect-projects-apps](todo/backburner/resurrect-projects-apps.md)
 - `2026-08-25` **The model picker shows `claude-code` instead of the model that is running** — [known-bugs/the-model-picker-shows-the-bare-harness](todo/known-bugs/the-model-picker-shows-the-bare-harness.md)
+- `2026-08-25` **Understand how Claude and opencode do memory, then centralize both into one vector database** — [memory/understand-and-centralize-agent-memory-into-a](todo/memory/understand-and-centralize-agent-memory-into-a.md)
 - `2026-08-23` **A worker cannot verify that the owner delegated to a manager, so it has to ask every time** — [agent-coordination/a-peer-cannot-verify-a-delegation](todo/agent-coordination/a-peer-cannot-verify-a-delegation.md)
 - `2026-08-23` **An agent cannot learn its own transcript id, so it cannot sign its own work** — [agent-coordination/an-agent-cannot-learn-its-own-session-id](todo/agent-coordination/an-agent-cannot-learn-its-own-session-id.md)
 - `2026-08-23` **The SendOff file size limit is one constant for everybody** — [sendoff/per-user-size-limit](todo/sendoff/per-user-size-limit.md)
 - `2026-08-22` **A commander picks the cheapest model that will do the job — for itself and for what it spawns** — [background-jobs/a-commander-picks-the-cheapest-model-that-will](todo/background-jobs/a-commander-picks-the-cheapest-model-that-will.md)
 - `2026-08-22` **Revisit the bun 1.3 pin once 1.4 has been watched for a while** — [infra/revisit-the-bun-1-3-pin-once-1-4-has-been](todo/infra/revisit-the-bun-1-3-pin-once-1-4-has-been.md)
 - `2026-08-22` **A plugin's permission should be on for every role by default, off only on request** — [multi-user/a-plugin-s-permission-should-be-on-for-every](todo/multi-user/a-plugin-s-permission-should-be-on-for-every.md)
-- `2026-08-22` **A user's settings should export and import as a plain file** — [settings/a-user-s-settings-should-export-and-import-as](todo/settings/a-user-s-settings-should-export-and-import-as.md)

todo/memory/_index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+---
+theme: memory
+heading: 'Memory — one store instead of per-harness files'
+kind: theme
+---
+
+How each coding harness remembers things today (Claude's `CLAUDE.md`/memory files, opencode's own
+mechanism, whatever else joins later), and whether that should be one shared store instead of N private
+ones. Related: `todo/affordances/` is the delivery mechanism this theme will need.

todo/memory/understand-and-centralize-agent-memory-into-a.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+id: memory/understand-and-centralize-agent-memory-into-a
+title: 'Understand how Claude and opencode do memory, then centralize both into one vector database'
+theme: memory
+status: open
+created: 2026-08-25
+date_source: stated
+order: 1
+---
+
+**Understand how Claude and opencode do memory, then centralize both into one vector database.** Wanted
+2026-08-25. Two steps in order, and the second should not be started before the first is actually
+answered rather than assumed:
+
+1. **Understand what "memory" means for each harness, as it exists today.** For Claude that is this
+   platform's own memory system (`~/.claude/projects/*/memory/`, `MEMORY.md` plus per-topic files — the
+   mechanism this very session uses) and whatever `CLAUDE.md` files and file-based conventions the SDK
+   itself reads. For opencode — wired into this platform (`sidecar/opencode/`) but not deeply understood
+   by this session — the equivalent needs the same audit: where does it read and write anything durable
+   about a session or a user, and does it call that memory at all or something else entirely.
+
+2. **Centralize into one vector database**, so both harnesses (and whatever joins later) read and write
+   the same store instead of each keeping its own files. **Needs an affordance per harness**, teaching it
+   NOT to use its native memory mechanism and to use the shared store instead — the same delivery
+   mechanism already used to teach Claude sessions about image rendering and gitea
+   (`capabilities/affordances/`, loaded per turn, no restart).
+
+Open, deliberately not decided here: which vector database; what gets embedded (raw notes, summaries,
+both); whether centralization REPLACES each harness's native memory outright or sits ahead of it as a
+retrieval layer the harness is told to consult first; and how a memory tied to one user account maps
+onto a store meant to serve every harness the same account uses. Step 1 should surface most of these —
+this is exploratory before it is a build.