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Give a new session your context

This guide gives a new AI session the decisions, preferences and facts of your earlier work, and the state of the work you want to continue. For what the memory holds and how chat-recall ranks it, see Memory and wake-up.

In Claude Code​

chat-recall init installs the wake-up hook. It adds the wake-up bundle of the project to each new session, and to a session after /clear. It does not run on a resumed session, because that session still has its context.

To check that the hook runs, start a new session and look for the facts at the start of its context. If they are missing, run:

chat-recall doctor

The hook gives up after 10 seconds, so a slow server never delays a session. CHAT_RECALL_WAKEUP_TIMEOUT changes the limit.

In another AI tool​

Ask the agent to call recall_wake_up at the start of the session. To keep it to one project, pass project:

recall_wake_up { "project": "example-app" }

max_facts and max_kg_facts change how many items the bundle holds.

From the terminal​

chat-recall memory wake-up --project example-app

The command prints the bundle. Paste it into any tool, or pipe it into a script.

Add an identity line​

  1. Write one or two lines about yourself and how you work into ~/.chat-recall/identity.txt.
  2. Start a new session.

The bundle starts with that text. recall_wake_up with identity replaces it for one call.

Continue the last piece of work​

Ask the agent to call recall_smart_resume, or say "continue where we left off". It returns what the newest session did, what is still open, the changed files and the cost, then a short digest of the two sessions before it.

  • project_filter keeps it to one project.
  • session_id resumes one session.
  • depth sets how many sessions it covers, up to 5.

Make a decision part of every wake-up​

Ask the agent to record it, for example: "Record the decision: we use Postgres for the job queue, area database." The agent calls recall_decision_record.

Give importance 4 or 5 to a decision that every future session must see. Lower values are stored but stay out of the bundle. A later decision in the same area replaces this one.