The three feeder wrappers (mempalace-docs, mempalace-pi-session,
mempalace-session) unconditionally ran 'mempalace repair --yes' after
mining, controllable only via --no-repair opt-out. The contrib launchd
and systemd templates did not pass --no-repair, so every scheduled tick
invoked the destructive in-place HNSW rebuild.
This has bitten us twice:
- 2026-05-04 09:08: a kickstart triggered repair while an MCP
subprocess held the DB open; the live collection was wiped (0
drawers) and had to be restored from the palace.backup snapshot.
- 2026-05-05 10:00: post-mine repair crashed mid-rebuild with
'NotFoundError: Collection [<uuid>] does not exist' - chromadb's
rebuild recreated the collection under a new UUID while the code
still held the old handle. Live DB survived only by luck (crash
hit before the swap).
Fix: flip the default.
- New flag: --repair (opt-in). Prints a warning and sleeps 3s before
invoking 'mempalace repair --yes'.
- --no-repair is retained as a deprecated no-op alias for backward
compatibility with any scripts/units still passing it.
- Default behavior: no repair. Routine ChromaDB add() keeps HNSW
consistent; repair is a recovery op, not a maintenance tick.
Docs updated to match: README, SKILL, ARCHITECTURE, AGENTS,
contrib/README. Scheduling guidance now explicitly warns against
enabling --repair on cron/launchd/systemd-timer runs.
joakimp
6352373a1f