nc://cognition

Cognition memory: durable facts from your own messages, kept locally with provenance and recalled under a budget. A Nodecode rewrite of aska-digital/cognition-memory by aska-digital.

The operator states a preference, a decision or a project fact, and it stays: no save call, no service, no account. Each incoming prompt is read once for a lasting statement — I prefer …, we decided …, remember that …, the project uses … — and what matches goes onto a durable queue, then through a fetch-first merge into one commit log under the home's cognition/ directory. Every committed entry carries provenance: the session it came from, the author, when it was kept, the label it is filed under and a trace id. A push whose base changed commits both versions under a conflict ref instead of overwriting the other writer. Committed entries ride each request under a token budget, with a marker when something was dropped.

Get it

Tell the agent "add the cognition cell", or run nodecode add nc://cognition.

Set it up

Nothing is required: the store is <home>/cognition/, capture and recall are both on, and the budget is 8000 tokens. The section takes:

• dir — where the store lives, when it should not be under the home.
• repos — labels a memory may be filed under; the first is used for new ones.
• capture — read each incoming prompt for a lasting statement (default on).
• recall — put committed memories in every request (default on).
• budget_tokens — the prompt budget recall fits into (default 8000, at least 64).
• queue-max-entries — pending entries kept before the oldest is dropped with a tombstone (default 1000).
• author — who memories are stamped with; empty reads the home's .gitconfig user.name, and nothing else is read outside the store.

Use it

The model gets three tools:

• cognition_search — find a committed memory by its words, before answering anything that may depend on an earlier session.
• cognition_status — the queue's backlog: how much is pending (extracted and not yet committed), the oldest age, the next retry, and the tombstones of entries the bound or the 24h cap dropped.
• cognition_dream — a read-only digest of what is known and the keep-both conflicts a person still has to choose between. Dream never writes.

And /cognition for the operator: bare, the store's line and a panel; /cognition search QUERY, /cognition status, /cognition dream, and /cognition remember TEXT to keep one by hand.

The store is two files, both readable and diffable: committed.json is the sole truth and queue.json the pending pushes and their tombstones. Nothing leaves the machine and no runtime beyond Nodecode is needed.

Test it

Offline, from the cells checkout, with every HTTP call stubbed:

NODECODE_SRC=<nodecode> .github/test-cell.sh tools/nodecode-cognition

13 tests, 0 failed — install and stop, idempotent start, a disabled cell installing nothing, a refused section, the verbs refusing while stopped, a lasting statement committed with provenance, chatter left out, a stale push keeping both, budgeted recall with its marker, committed memory riding every prompt, status and dream answering, a conflict in the digest, and /cognition answering.