Day 10 · Memory breaks across sessions (No.7)

[onestardao]

Day 10 · Memory breaks across sessions (No.7)

Symptom
you open a new chat window and the model forgets everything. long projects or multi-day sessions feel brittle. earlier traces vanish, so context must be re-explained from scratch. “why can’t it just remember what we already covered?”

ProblemMap

• No.7 Memory Breaks Across Sessions
  cross-session continuity fails. vector recall does not match reasoning state. previous dialogue is gone unless explicitly reattached.

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What this usually looks like

• planning a feature across several chats. day 1 decisions are forgotten on day 2
• multi-step debugging. error solved yesterday, same error re-explained today
• agent workflows break. one agent summarizes, another executes, but they do not share state
• transcripts re-embedded inconsistently. one store per session, no bridge keys
• citations drift. the same doc has different ids across runs, so memory cannot stitch together

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60-sec quick test

1. multi-chat check
   run the same seed query in two fresh chats. note if the chain of reasoning restarts from zero.

2. trace handoff
   paste a previous answer (summarized) and see if the model can re-enter the prior chain.

3. compare ids
   check whether snippet or section ids persist across sessions. if not, you are guaranteed drift.

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Diagnose checklist

• no stable conversation_id or project key carried across sessions
• retrieval index rebuilt ad hoc, no link between yesterday’s and today’s chunks
• metadata missing. offsets, ids, and hashes are not logged, so yesterday’s context cannot be verified
• no re-attach step. memory is assumed, not reconstructed
• evals run per-session only. long-horizon regression never tested

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Minimal fix

Goal provide continuity through explicit trace + re-attach. never assume the model “remembers.”

1. Metadata trace
   persist snippet_id, section_id, offsets, and conversation keys into plain text.

2. Reattach context
   when starting a new chat, attach the trace file as input. this re-anchors the model to the exact same spans and reasoning steps.

3. Stable ids
   ensure the same doc chunk has the same id across sessions. collapse duplicates.

4. Continuity gate
   if trace not attached, block long-horizon reasoning or return a bridge prompt: “previous session context not loaded. please re-attach trace.”

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Hard fixes when minimal is not enough

• build a shared index with persistent ids across all sessions
• version and hash documents. if source updates, record the diff and re-index
• introduce project-level keys so multiple agents can coordinate over the same state
• add regression tests that span multiple days, not just one-shot queries

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WFGY guardrails you can enable

• Traceability log. enforce snippet ids and offsets per session
• Re-attach operator. simple script that reads yesterday’s trace and pastes into today’s chat
• Bridge for missing context. refuse to hallucinate missing history. prompt the user to re-load trace
• Continuity eval. paraphrase yesterday’s query, verify answer is consistent with today’s context

in forums, label this class as No.7. it is the cross-session memory break. fix it by logging and re-attaching, not by hoping the model “remembers.”

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Tiny script you can paste

trace writer

import json

def write_trace(snippets, fname="trace.json"):
    trace = [{"id": s.id, "section": s.section, "offset": s.offset} for s in snippets]
    with open(fname, "w") as f:
        json.dump(trace, f, indent=2)

trace re-attach

def attach_trace(fname="trace.json"):
    with open(fname) as f:
        return f.read()  # paste this string into your new chat

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Acceptance checks before you call it fixed

• same snippet id = same content across sessions
• ΔS(question, retrieved) remains stable across day 1 vs day 2
• citations consistent even when chat resets
• bridge step triggers when trace not attached

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TL;DR

cross-session memory is brittle by default. do not assume the chat window remembers. log metadata, re-attach traces, enforce stable ids. once you do, reasoning continuity survives across days. call it No.7.

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