mempalace-toolkit/contrib/README.md

contrib/ — automation recipes for mempalace-session

Manual invocation of mempalace-session is fine on a machine you actively drive. For long-running devboxes, a weekly automated mine keeps the palace fresh without thinking about it. This directory ships ready-to-use templates for two common scheduling mechanisms.

Before using either: confirm the toolkit is installed and the wrapper works — mempalace-session --dry-run should list qualifying sessions. If that errors, fix the install before scheduling.

Pick one. Running both would double-mine (harmless — dedup skips everything on the second run — but wastes wall time on the HNSW repair).

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systemd user timer (recommended on modern Linux)

Why: runs without the user logged in (with loginctl enable-linger), survives reboots, logs to journalctl, Persistent=true catches missed runs after the machine was off. No root required — it's a user unit.

Install:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp contrib/systemd/mempalace-session.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
cp contrib/systemd/mempalace-session.timer   ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now mempalace-session.timer

# Optional: keep the timer running when you log out (needed on headless servers)
sudo loginctl enable-linger "$USER"

Verify:

# Is the timer active and when will it next fire?
systemctl --user list-timers mempalace-session.timer

# Last run status + log tail
systemctl --user status mempalace-session.service

# Full run log (since today)
journalctl --user -u mempalace-session --since today

# Force a run right now (outside the schedule), for testing
systemctl --user start mempalace-session.service

Uninstall:

systemctl --user disable --now mempalace-session.timer
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/mempalace-session.{service,timer}
systemctl --user daemon-reload

What the service does

• Type=oneshot — runs to completion, not a long-lived daemon.
• ConditionPathExists=%h/.local/share/opencode/opencode.db — skips silently on machines that haven't used opencode (no wasted boot-time runs).
• ConditionPathExists=!%t/mempalace-session.lock + ExecStartPre/ExecStopPost — soft mutual exclusion between overlapping runs.
• Nice=10 + IOSchedulingClass=idle — background priority; won't interfere with interactive work.
• TimeoutStartSec=7200 — 2 hour ceiling. The reference 60-session mine takes ~21 min; this is headroom for large corpora + slow disks.

What the timer does

• OnCalendar=Mon 03:00 — weekly, Monday 03:00 local time. Edit to taste (see man systemd.time for syntax).
• Persistent=true — if the machine was off at the scheduled time, run on next boot.
• RandomizedDelaySec=30m — jitters up to 30 minutes to avoid thundering-herd across a fleet.

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cron

Why: simpler, ubiquitous, works on any UNIX. No loginctl enable-linger dance, no user-units awareness required.

Caveats: no "persistent" semantics (a missed run while the machine was off stays missed); default cron output goes to mail or is silently dropped if no MTA.

Install:

# Edit the template first — replace USER with your actual username
sed "s|USER|$USER|g" contrib/cron/mempalace-session.cron > /tmp/mempalace-session.cron

# Append to your existing crontab (preserves any entries you already have)
(crontab -l 2>/dev/null; cat /tmp/mempalace-session.cron) | crontab -
rm /tmp/mempalace-session.cron

# Verify
crontab -l | grep mempalace

Ensure ~/.cache/mempalace-session/ exists so the log file can be written:

mkdir -p ~/.cache/mempalace-session

Verify a run is happening:

# Tail the log the cron entry writes to
tail -f ~/.cache/mempalace-session/cron.log

# Or force a run manually to prove the command is well-formed
mempalace-session

Uninstall:

crontab -e   # remove the mempalace-session line by hand

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Which should I pick?

Situation	Pick
Desktop / laptop, modern systemd-based distro	systemd user timer
Long-running devbox or server, wants "Persistent=true" catch-up	systemd user timer
macOS, BSD, or distro without systemd	cron
You already have a cron-based job scheduler on the box	cron
You want logs in journalctl rather than a file	systemd user timer

If you're not sure, pick systemd. Persistent=true alone is worth it on any box that ever sleeps or reboots.

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Running inside a container (devbox)

Inside a Docker-based devbox, neither systemd nor cron typically runs by default. Two options:

1. Schedule on the host, not the container — have the host run docker exec -u <user> <container> mempalace-session on a timer. The container must be long-running (not per-invocation) for this to work.
2. Run a systemd-in-container setup — viable but usually not worth the complexity for this alone.

For most devbox users, a simple weekly manual run via mempalace-session (or a host-side cron that shells into the container) is the pragmatic choice. The tool is cheap enough that skipping a week costs nothing — dedup will catch up on the next run.

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Tuning

Frequency. Weekly is the default because:

• New sessions you care about are typically a handful per week per user.
• Dedup is free on unchanged sessions, so there's no cost to running daily other than the ~5 min post-mine repair.
• Weekly keeps the palace fresh enough that searches almost always return current context.

Daily or more: edit OnCalendar= or the cron DOW field. On a daily schedule, add --no-repair to the wrapper invocation and let a separate weekly unit handle repair — otherwise you repair 7× more often than you need.

Monthly: probably too infrequent. You'll search for "that thing we discussed last Tuesday" and miss it.

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See also

• ../../ARCHITECTURE.md §5 — operational routine (triggers, cadence) in full context.
• ../../SKILL.md — the agent-side Operational Routine section for when an AI agent should suggest running this.