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openchamber/packages/web/server/lib/session-knowledge/DOCUMENTATION.md
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Bohdan Triapitsyn 34e8a24b20 feat(knowledge): rebuild the project notes panel as Project knowledge (#2973)
The panel stored notes, todos and plans inside one shared JSON file that
six unrelated domains also wrote to, synchronised itself through window
CustomEvents, and could only read plans. It is now Project knowledge:
server-owned storage with explicit routes, a store with rollback, a
section sidebar, plans that open and edit in place, and search across
all of it.

Notes and plans the user pins travel with every message sent in that
project. Pinning is project state, not an attachment to one message, so
it holds until unpinned and the work status panel names what is riding
along and can detach it.

Agent memory is added alongside, in two scopes: what is true about the
user, and what is true about this codebase. The split is not cosmetic —
a wrong project fact costs one project and is noticed, while a wrong
global fact quietly shapes every session everywhere and the user has no
code to check it against. It stays separate from notes so an agent
mistake cannot land in what the user wrote. Sessions receive an index of
titles only; bodies are read on demand, because an index carrying full
text grows until it crowds out the conversation.

Deciding what a session must be told, and whether it has been told, now
lives on the server. The client owned it before, which meant sessions
started without a UI — scheduled tasks, sessions the agent dispatches —
received nothing at all, and a tab's record of what it had sent outlived
the conversation: after compaction the agent no longer held the block
while the tab went on believing it did. What was delivered is recorded
in the session's own metadata, and compaction restores it through the
runtime that already restores pinned messages, in the same turn.

Agent memory ships dark behind OPENCHAMBER_MEMORY_ENABLE: unset, there
is no tool, no routes, no session index, no settings row and no panel
tab. Absent rather than switched off, so nothing invites turning on a
feature that has not been announced. Pinned notes and plans are
unaffected and ship as normal.
2026-08-18 02:59:04 +03:00

3.7 KiB

Session Knowledge

What a session must be told about the project — the user's pinned notes and plans, and the index of what the agent has remembered — and whether it has been told yet.

Why it is here and not in the UI

The client used to own this: it assembled the text, decided when to send it, and remembered what it had sent in a module-scoped map. Two consequences followed.

A session started without a UI got nothing at all. Scheduled tasks and sessions the agent dispatches build their prompts on the server and never touch the browser, so pinned context and the memory index simply did not exist for them.

And a tab's memory of what it sent survives compaction, while the conversation does not. After a summary the agent no longer holds the block, but the tab goes on believing it does and never sends it again.

The contract

session.metadata.openchamber.knowledge_context_delivered holds the signature of what the session is carrying. It lives with the session, so it survives the tab closing and is visible to every sender, including the ones with no tab.

The signature covers content revisions, not just identity: editing a pinned note must re-send it, not merely renaming one.

Three moments, two deliveries

Moment Delivery
A message from the UI synthetic part on that message
A scheduled task, a session the agent dispatched synthetic part on that prompt
After compaction its own prompt_async, alongside the pinned messages

The first two attach to an outgoing message because there is one. Compaction has none, which is why it re-sends on its own — and it travels with context-obligatory's pinned messages in a single turn, since two synthetic messages back to back read as the agent being interrupted twice.

Failure behaviour

Nothing here may fail a send. A message without its background costs the agent some context; a failed send costs the user their message. Every caller treats an error as "no block this time".

A source that will not load never blanks the rest: an unreadable memory store still delivers the pinned notes. A memory scope that failed to load is left out rather than indexed as empty, which would teach the agent to store again what it already has.

Delivery is recorded only after the send is accepted. Recording it when the text is handed over would leave a failed send believing the agent had context it never received.

Entries that read as instructions

Memory is the one place where text from outside can settle permanently. The agent reads a page, decides a line is worth keeping, saves it — and from then on it rides into every session in every project. An injection anywhere else lives for one conversation.

agent-memory/threat-patterns scans on write and again on every read, so an entry written before a pattern existed, or edited on disk since, is judged now. A match never deletes: the entry is stored, flagged, kept out of what sessions are told, and shown in the panel with a warning. Silently dropping it would hide the attempt from the only person able to judge it.

Patterns, not a model — this runs on every index build. That buys the blunt cases only, which is the honest expectation.

Shipping dark

Agent memory is complete but unreleased. OPENCHAMBER_MEMORY_ENABLE decides whether it exists in a given process at all: unset, there is no tool, no routes, no session index, no settings row and no panel tab — absent rather than switched off, which would invite turning on something never announced. The setting itself also defaults to off, so setting the variable does not enable memory by itself.

Pinned notes and plans are unaffected: they ship as normal and travel with every message whether or not memory exists.