Files
mempalace-toolkit/extensions/pi/README.md
T
joakimp e1cc7592a1 docs: write the RFC 003 that the code has been citing all along, plus an operator-facing fleet-memory guide
`logstream.py`'s module docstring is headed "Agent coordination event log for
MemPalace (RFC 003)" and enumerates five "Design constraints (RFC 003)".
Comments cite "RFC 003 phase 5", "RFC 003 suggested defaults" and "the first
RFC 003 dogfood". Every event/artifact tool description cites RFC 003. The
document has never existed — confirmed by searching this repo and the primary
host. So this is a retrospective spec: it transcribes what the implementation
already believes, and records what it does NOT do.

docs/rfc-003-coordination-log.md, verified line-by-line against mempalace
3.8.0 (every claim cites file.py:LINE, indexed in §10 for re-verification).
The parts that are not visible from the tool descriptions:

- No idempotency guard on event_append or put_artifact (§7.1). The replication
  path checks `id OR (origin_replica, origin_seq)` before applying; the client
  path checks nothing. So peer replay is safe and CLIENT RETRY IS NOT — a
  retried append forks a coordination thread into two ids. This makes the
  fleet's "a timeout is not a failure, verify before retrying" rule
  load-bearing rather than advisory.
- Coordination traffic is deliberately exempt from BOTH palace locks
  (§4) — _HTTP_LOCK_FREE_TOOLS and _PEER_WRITER_EXEMPT_TOOLS, each with its
  own rationale in-source. "One large mine blocks every client" is true of
  drawer writes and false of coordination writes.
- `mempalace sync` never touches the log, and no DELETE FROM events exists
  anywhere (§2, §9.1) — answering for the logstream a question RFC 001 §7.2
  left open, and making the log permanent and unbounded.
- from_agent is shape-validated and never authenticated; there is no read
  scoping at all (§6). The log authenticates the fleet, not the agent. That is
  simultaneously the security limitation and the only way to positive-control
  the mailbox.
- Three distinct orderings — seq (local arrival rowid), origin_seq (author's
  counter), hlc (fleet-wide, lexicographically sortable) — and origin_replica
  identifies the PALACE, not the writer, which is why from_agent/to_agent carry
  the whole distinction between machines (§3.2).
- GET /logstream/events does not exist and never did (§7.8). An earlier
  measurement saw it 404 and blamed the reverse proxy; that inference was right
  for /sync/* and /logstream/stream and wrong for this one. Corrected in
  extensions/pi/README.md §3 too, in place, dated.

docs/fleet-memory.md is the operator-facing companion the repo lacked
entirely: the front-door README had zero mentions of coordination, so the
channel was undiscoverable unless a message happened to arrive. It covers the
five stores and what each is for (drawers/wings/rooms, diaries, KG, palace
graph, coordination log), what a central palace buys a fleet — awareness,
non-repetition of expensive work, and retractions that travel — and a decision
flow for drawer vs KG vs event. Six mermaid diagrams, all rendered and
inspected as images, not merely parsed: the first pass produced a truncated
state label from an HTML entity and a self-loop that drew a meaningless dotted
lasso. Validation says "no syntax error"; only looking says "correct".

Also: a Documentation table in the top-level README so all of the above is
reachable from the front door.

Deliberately host-agnostic, per synlig-primary-runbook.md's precedent — no
device names, hostnames or operator names in either new document.
2026-08-26 22:55:55 +02:00

562 lines
28 KiB
Markdown

# pi ↔ MemPalace MCP bridge
The canonical source of `~/.pi/agent/extensions/mempalace.ts` — the TypeScript
extension that wires [MemPalace](https://github.com/MemPalace/mempalace)'s MCP
server into the [pi coding-agent](https://github.com/earendil-works/pi)
harness. Installs wake-up context injection, per-tool schema passthrough,
and a `/mempalace-diary` slash-command.
This directory **only** holds the bridge. Pi's own base config (keybindings,
environment loader, settings template) lives in the sibling
[`pi-toolkit`](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/pi-toolkit) repo — split out
2026-05-05 so [`opencode-devbox`](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/opencode-devbox)
can build slim containers that include pi without dragging in mempalace's
dependencies (~300 MB).
**Jump to:**
- [What it does](#what-it-does)
- [Transport: local vs external](#transport-local-vs-external)
- [Automatic transcript feeding](#automatic-transcript-feeding)
- [The `Type.Unsafe` gotcha](#the-typeunsafe-gotcha)
- [Deploying pi with mempalace on a new machine](#deploying-pi-with-mempalace-on-a-new-machine)
- [Fail-soft, identity, debugging](#fail-soft)
---
## What it does
1. **Connects to MemPalace** and does the MCP handshake (`initialize` +
`notifications/initialized` + `tools/list`). By default it **spawns
`mempalace-mcp`** as a local stdio subprocess (`StdioMcpClient`); if
`$MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` is set it instead talks to a shared MemPalace over
HTTP (`RemoteMcpClient`) and spawns no local process — see
[Transport](#transport-local-vs-external).
2. **Registers each MCP tool** as a pi tool with its real `inputSchema`
passed through via `Type.Unsafe(...)` (see gotcha below).
3. **Wake-up auto-injection** (`before_agent_start`, one-shot per fresh
session): calls `mempalace_status` + `mempalace_diary_read` and
injects the result as a `mempalace-wakeup` system message so the
agent orients itself the way `~/.agents/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md`
describes. Skipped on resume/fork (context is already in the thread).
4. **Automatic transcript feeding** (`session_shutdown`, and a debounced
`agent_settled`): stages + mines this pi installation's own session
transcripts into the palace with no user action needed — **as of
mempalace-toolkit `29e660e` (2026-08-12); see the version gate below,
because "the extension is installed" does not imply "this copy can feed"**.
Unlike the diary
below, this needs no LLM turn — it's a subprocess + a tool call — so it
*can* run on `session_shutdown` where the diary cannot. See
[Automatic transcript feeding](#automatic-transcript-feeding).
5. **Manual wind-down** via a `/mempalace-diary [topic]` slash command:
sends a prompt asking the LLM to call `mempalace_diary_write` with
an AAAK-formatted entry summarizing the session. This one stays manual
because it needs the LLM to compose the entry, and `session_shutdown`
fires too late to drive another LLM turn — a constraint that applies to
the diary specifically, not to feeding (see above).
6. **Stamps device provenance on every write** — `<harness>@<device>` as the
writer on `add_drawer`/`checkpoint`/`mine`/`event_append`/`artifact_put`, and
a `HOST:<device>|` prefix on diary entries — as of mempalace-toolkit
`553d8657` (2026-08-25). See [Identity](#identity).
## Automatic transcript feeding
> **⚠️ Version gate — requires mempalace-toolkit ≥ `29e660e` (2026-08-12), and "installed" is not
> the same question as "capable".** Feeding was added to this extension on 2026-08-12. A copy baked
> into a container image built before that date has *no* feed path at all — its entire
> `session_shutdown` handler is `client.stop()` — and it fails the only way a memory system must not:
> silently, looking exactly like a healthy run with nothing to do.
>
> **Check the deployed artifact, never the repo.** `/opt/*` in an image is baked at build time and can
> be days behind a bind-mounted clone, and `~/.pi/agent/extensions/mempalace.ts` is usually a symlink
> *into* that baked copy:
>
> ```sh
> grep -c MEMPALACE_FEED "$(readlink -f ~/.pi/agent/extensions/mempalace.ts)" # 0 = cannot feed
> ```
>
> Zero hits means this machine needs the fallback recipes in
> [`contrib/`](../../contrib/README.md) until it is rebuilt, regardless of what the toolkit repo's HEAD
> looks like. Date the deployed copy with `stat` plus that content probe — not `git log`, which fails
> with *"detected dubious ownership"* inside a root-owned `/opt` tree. As of 2026-08-14 the whole
> pi-devbox fleet fails this check.
The bridge feeds this pi installation's own session transcripts into the
palace by itself — no scheduler, no cron, no manual invocation. It fires on
`session_shutdown` (covers quit, `/new`, `/resume`, `/fork`) and on a
debounced `agent_settled` (covers a long session that later crashes, since a
hard kill runs no shutdown handler at all).
The work is split across two processes, and the reason is a hard constraint,
not a style choice: **the palace is single-writer.** A live pi session
always holds it through this extension's own `mempalace-mcp` subprocess, so
an unattended `mempalace mine` from anywhere else fails outright with
`palace ... is held by PID <n>`. The bridge therefore:
1. Runs `mempalace-pi-session --prepare --reason <trigger> --wing <wing>` as a
subprocess. This does every palace-free step — parse pi's JSONL, apply
the quality threshold, stage the export, and (remote mode only) `rsync`
it to the palace host — and prints one line, `MINE_SOURCE=<path>`,
without ever touching the palace.
2. Calls the `mempalace_mine` MCP tool **through this extension's own
client** on that path. Going through the client that already holds the
lock is the only way to write during a live session, and it automatically
targets whichever palace the bridge is pointed at — local stdio or a
shared remote one.
`mempalace-pi-session` (in this repo's `bin/`) is the actual exporter and
owns the quality gate, the remote transport, and every flag — see its
`--help` for the full reference; this section only covers the extension's
side of the wiring.
**Env knobs (extension side):**
| Var | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| `MEMPALACE_FEED` | `1` | Set `0` to disable automatic feeding entirely. |
| `MEMPALACE_FEED_BIN` | `mempalace-pi-session` | Helper to run. |
| `MEMPALACE_FEED_WING` | `wing_conversations` | Target wing — passed to both the exporter and the `mempalace_mine` call. |
| `MEMPALACE_FEED_DEBOUNCE_MS` | `600000` (10 min) | Minimum gap between mid-session (`agent_settled`) feeds. Bounds crash loss to one window instead of a whole session. |
| `MEMPALACE_FEED_PREPARE_TIMEOUT_MS` | `120000` | Kills a wedged `--prepare` subprocess. |
| `MEMPALACE_FEED_MINE_TIMEOUT_MS` | `30000` | Caps the `mempalace_mine` call so a stalled palace can't hang session exit. |
**Remote palace:** if `$MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` is set (see
[Transport](#transport-local-vs-external)), `mempalace_mine`'s source path is
expanded on the *server*, which cannot see this machine's transcripts —
that's exactly why step 1 above rsyncs first in that mode. Configure the
inbox with `MEMPALACE_PI_SSH_TARGET` (required for remote feeding — feeding
is silently skipped without it), `MEMPALACE_PI_SSH_CONFIG`, and
`MEMPALACE_PI_REMOTE_PATH`; see `mempalace-pi-session --help`.
**Concurrency:** overlapping triggers coalesce — a `session_shutdown` landing
while a debounced tick is still running joins that in-flight feed instead of
racing it. `mempalace-pi-session` itself also takes a non-blocking `flock`,
so even two independent invocations (e.g. this extension and the
container-start catch-up some devbox images run) never race each other;
losing that race is harmless because the next trigger re-exports from
scratch.
## Transport: local vs external
The bridge speaks the same MCP protocol over two interchangeable transports,
chosen at load time:
- **Local (default)** — spawns `mempalace-mcp` as a stdio subprocess; the palace
lives wherever that process opens it (default `~/.mempalace`). This is the
hardened path with per-request timeouts and respawn/self-heal (below).
- **External** — set `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` to a MemPalace HTTP endpoint (e.g.
`https://mempalace.jordbo.se/mcp`, the live fleet primary — full path
including `/mcp`, no trailing slash) and the bridge connects over HTTP
instead, spawning no local process. Use this to share **one** palace across
several harnesses/containers (pi + opencode + native).
`MEMPALACE_REMOTE_TOKEN`, if set, is sent as `Authorization: Bearer <token>`.
Use `https://` for anything crossing a network — the plaintext `http://`
example that stood here until 2026-08-14 predated the reverse proxy.
The two transports are **either/or**, decided once at load time: with the URL
set, writes go **only** to the remote palace. There is no dual-write, no
local mirror, and no local `mempalace-mcp` process at all.
⚠️ **Consequence: once `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` is set, the `mempalace` CLI on
that machine is no longer a valid way to inspect or feed the palace the agent
is using.** The CLI has no remote support whatsoever — its only selector is
`--palace <path>` — so it reads and writes the LOCAL on-disk archive. After a
flip that archive is frozen, yet `mempalace status` / `mempalace search`
still report a plausible drawer count and look exactly like success: a
false-positive machine. Memories filed with the CLI post-flip land in the
dead archive, not in the shared palace. Use the agent's own palace tools
(which go over HTTP), and mine backfills **on the palace host**.
**Setting these for a *native* pi install — there is no `.env` to edit.**
Worth stating plainly, because the obvious guess is wrong: **pi loads no
dotenv file and has no `env` block in `settings.json`**, and this extension
reads `process.env` and nothing else (`createClient()` →
`process.env.MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL`). A native install therefore inherits
whatever **the shell that launches `pi`** exports — that is the only hook.
So export them from your shell rc, or from a file it explicitly sources:
```sh
# ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc) — if you keep secrets in ~/.config/pi/.env,
# nothing sources it for you; do it yourself:
set -a; [ -f ~/.config/pi/.env ] && . ~/.config/pi/.env; set +a
```
Two traps. A pi launched from a **GUI** (Spotlight, dock, an editor's
terminal that spawns a non-login shell) does not necessarily read that rc, so
it can silently stay on the local palace. And exporting the variable in the
shell where you *edited* the rc does not affect an already-running pi — the
transport is chosen once at extension load. Confirm the result the same way
as a container flip: ask the agent for `mempalace_status` and check the
reported palace path is the **remote** host's, not your own
`$HOME/.mempalace/palace` — see
[`docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md`](../../docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md) §3.8.
Serve such an endpoint with `mempalace serve --host 172.17.0.1 --port 8765`
(the `pi-devbox` / `opencode-devbox` repos ship a
`docker-compose.mempalace.yml` for exactly this).
**The HTTP transport is authenticated as of mempalace 3.6.0** — earlier docs
here said otherwise, from the v1.3.0 era. `serve` mints a bearer token, keeps
it 0600, passes it via the environment (never argv), compares it with
`hmac.compare_digest`, and **refuses to bind a non-loopback host without one**
unless `--allow-insecure`. It also pins `Host` and allowlists `Origin`
(anti-DNS-rebinding), and can terminate TLS itself.
Two binds to avoid. `0.0.0.0` publishes the palace to the whole LAN. And
`127.0.0.1` is the trap that looks safe: the Host pin is enforced *only* on
loopback binds, so behind a tunnel every proxied request 403s — and
token auto-minting is gated on the bind being non-loopback, so it starts with
**no authentication at all**, no warning. Bind the docker0 gateway
(`172.17.0.1`): reachable from the host and its containers, not from the LAN.
See
[`docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md`](../../docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md).
Implementation note: the HTTP client (`RemoteMcpClient`) is **vendored** from
[`pi-extensions`](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/pi-extensions)'
`mcp-loader.ts`. A `MCP-STREAMABLE-HTTP-CLIENT-SYNC` token keeps the two
copies from drifting — [`scripts/check-mcp-client-sync.sh`](../../scripts/check-mcp-client-sync.sh)
fails if they diverge (it skips gracefully when the `pi-extensions` checkout
isn't present).
## Fail-soft
If `mempalace-mcp` can't be spawned (PATH missing, binary crashes at
startup, …) the extension logs to stderr and returns early. pi keeps
working without palace tools rather than refusing to start.
**In remote mode the triggers differ but the outcome is identical.** An
unreachable server, a DNS failure, or an HTTP 401 from a wrong/expired token
all end the same way: after bounded retries the extension prints
`mempalace-mcp unavailable after retries; continuing without palace tools` and
**does not register the palace tools**.
It is **fail-closed, not fail-local**: it does *not* quietly fall back to the
local palace, so a remote outage can never scatter memories into a local copy
nobody will look at again. The practical corollary, worth knowing before you
debug the wrong layer: **"the agent has no `mempalace_*` tools" is the
expected symptom of a server, token, or DNS fault**, not of a broken install.
Diagnose it with a direct `curl` to `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` — see
[`docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md`](../../docs/phase-1-exposure-runbook.md)
§3.8. The design rationale for de-registering rather than degrading is in
[`docs/rfc-001-global-palace.md`](../../docs/rfc-001-global-palace.md) §2 and §4.1.
## Identity
`agent_name` for diary calls comes from `$MEMPALACE_AGENT_NAME`, defaulting
to `"pi"`. First diary write against that identity creates `wing_<name>`
in the palace. Set the env var if you want to run pi under a distinct
identity on a given machine (e.g. `pi-laptop` vs `pi-server`).
### Device provenance is stamped here, at the edge
As of mempalace-toolkit `553d8657` (2026-08-25) the bridge fills in *who wrote
this* so the agent never has to:
| Write | What the bridge sets |
|---|---|
| `add_drawer`, `checkpoint`, `mine` | `added_by = "<harness>@<device>"` when the caller left it unset |
| `event_append`, `artifact_put` | `from_agent` / `created_by` likewise |
| `diary_write` | prefixes the entry text with `HOST:<device>\|` |
`<device>` is `$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE`; `<harness>` is `pi`. **Both gates must
hold:** `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` set *and* `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` pointing at a
shared palace. A solitary palace stamps nothing, because there is no second
machine to disambiguate from and the annotation would be pure noise.
Two design points worth not re-litigating:
- **The diary marker is in the entry text, not metadata.** `diary_read` returns
content only, so metadata is invisible to the agent that later reads the
entry — an attribution nobody can see is not an attribution. Search results
are built from a fixed key list with the same consequence.
- **RFC 001 §7.3.2 ranks "the agent stamps it via a skill instruction" as the
worst available option**, and it was: the agent that wrote that instruction
into the consumer skill then filed its own provenance drawer as
`added_by=checkpoint`. Per-call boilerplate gets forgotten. Hence the edge.
Callers keep two responsibilities the bridge cannot infer: pass
`source_drawer_id` on `kg_add` (triples have no provenance field at all), and
pass an explicit writer **only** when deliberately filing on behalf of another
device.
Because the extension is baked into an image, *a container older than the
stamping commit satisfies both gates and still stamps nothing* — the env vars
are set and the code is simply absent. The one-line check:
```bash
grep -c MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE "$(readlink -f ~/.pi/agent/extensions/mempalace.ts)"
```
## Agent coordination over the logstream
The palace also carries an append-only coordination log (RFC 003:
`mempalace_event_*`, `mempalace_artifact_*`) used for cross-machine delegation,
review, patch handoff and retraction. Relevant to this extension in three ways:
**1. The bridge makes directed addressing possible.** Where every machine is a
thin MCP client of one shared palace, all clients report the *same*
`origin_replica`, so the log cannot tell two machines apart by transport
identity — `from_agent` / `to_agent` carry the entire distinction. Measured
2026-08-26 from the tor-ms22 client: `mempalace_mesh_peers` returned
`peers: []` with a single replica id authoring every event from every machine.
So the stamping above is what makes `to_agent="pi@tor-ms22"` mean anything, and
an *unstamped* client addressed as bare `pi` is unreachable.
**2. The bridge now READS the log too — auto-delivered mailbox.** It derives what
this device owes and injects it, so an event addressed to this machine no longer
waits for the agent to think of asking. Two delivery points, both fail-silent:
- **Session start** — one more section in the existing `before_agent_start`
wake-up injection, alongside `mempalace_status` and `diary_read`.
- **Mid-session** — an `agent_settled` poll, floored at
`MEMPALACE_MAILBOX_POLL_MS` (default 300000, i.e. 5 min), delivering via
`pi.sendMessage(..., { deliverAs: "steer" })`. Note this **queues, it does not
interrupt**: at `agent_settled` the agent is idle, so the message lands at the
start of the next turn and spends no LLM call. There is deliberately no
`triggerTurn` — waking the model on inbound fleet traffic is a much larger
behavioural change than auto-delivery.
Owed-ness is **derived, never read off a field**, because `event_ack` appends and
`status` is written once: a directed `open` event matches the mailbox query
*forever*, answered or not. Two calls (`to_agent=<me> status=open`, and
`from_agent=<me>`), then a candidate counts as answered only when one of this
device's own events has a **strictly higher `seq`**, joins via
`metadata.ack_of` or a shared `correlation_id`, *and* carries a terminal status
(`applied`/`superseded`/`failed`/`blocked`). The `seq` test is load-bearing:
without it one terminal reply suppresses every later ask on that correlation
forever. `seq` is replica-local, so `hlc` is the correct key once `mesh_peers`
reports actual peers.
`*` broadcasts are excluded even though `to_agent=<me>` matches them, because the
protocol says a broadcast owes nobody a reply — which also means broadcasting an
ask demonstrably reaches no owed set, giving that documented anti-pattern teeth.
Gated on `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` **and** `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` (the same pair as
the stamper, since an unstamped client has no address to be reached at), and
disabled outright with `MEMPALACE_MAILBOX=0`. Inert on a solitary palace: no
calls, no injection. Delivery is the mechanism; the *norms* — what a reply owes,
and that only a terminal event closes a thread — remain normative in the
*consumer* skill (`~/.agents/skills/mempalace/SKILL.md`). **This file documents
the mechanism; the skill is normative for behaviour.**
**3. Live push is a deployment question, not a code one.** The palace implements
an SSE endpoint (`GET /logstream/stream`, `text/event-stream` in
`mempalace/mcp_server.py`), but a deployment may expose only the MCP endpoint
through its reverse proxy — verified 2026-08-26 against
`https://mempalace.jordbo.se`, where `/logstream/stream` and `/sync/peers`
return 404 while `/mcp` serves normally. Where that is the
case, polling through the existing MCP client is the only available path — which
is what the mailbox in §2 does — and enabling SSE means a proxy route plus an
auth decision, not an extension change.
> ⚠️ **Corrected 2026-08-26.** An earlier revision of this paragraph listed
> `/logstream/events` alongside those two as proxy-blocked. That route **does not
> exist in the server at all** — the complete GET table in mempalace 3.8.0 is
> `/healthz`, `/statusz`, `/logstream/stream` and `/sync/{version_vector,ops,artifact,peers}`,
> so `/logstream/events` would 404 against a directly-reachable server too. The
> proxy inference was right for the other two and wrong for that one; see
> [RFC 003 §7.8](../../docs/rfc-003-coordination-log.md). Distinguish *route absent*
> from *route blocked* before blaming infrastructure.
As with stamping, all of this is inert unless `MEMPALACE_REMOTE_URL` points at a
shared palace. On a solitary palace the event tools work fine and the log
contains only this machine's own events.
## Stall protection (per-request timeout)
Every JSON-RPC request to `mempalace-mcp` carries a timeout. Without it, a
wedged server (classically: an OrbStack/virtiofs cold-open of a large
`chroma.sqlite3` or an HNSW load) leaves the awaiting promise pending
*forever*, which freezes the pi TUI — ESC cancels the LLM stream, not a
pending tool `execute()`. On timeout the extension rejects the request
**and** kills the stalled child (SIGTERM→SIGKILL), so pi gets a clear
error instead of hanging. This is a per-REQUEST timeout, not a process-lifetime
one — the long-lived server is only killed when a request genuinely stalls.
- `MEMPALACE_MCP_TIMEOUT_MS` — tool-call/request timeout. Default `60000`.
Kept short on purpose: a *query* taking this long is genuinely wedged.
- `MEMPALACE_MCP_INIT_TIMEOUT_MS` — `initialize` + `tools/list` handshake
timeout. Default `300000`. Deliberately generous: a genuine first
cold-open over virtiofs can legitimately take minutes, and killing a
still-progressing init only to respawn and re-pay the same cold cost is
strictly worse than waiting.
- Set either to `0` to disable (legacy unbounded behavior).
### Self-heal (respawn instead of a permanent latch)
A stall-kill (or any crash) used to be a **permanent** latch: `available`
flipped off and stayed off until you restarted pi. It is now self-healing —
the next tool call transparently respawns `mempalace-mcp` and retries.
- Respawns use **capped exponential backoff** so a persistently-broken
server can't hot-loop: `MEMPALACE_MCP_MAX_RESPAWNS` attempts (default
`2`; set `0` to disable self-heal and keep the old fail-fast latch),
with `MEMPALACE_MCP_RESPAWN_BACKOFF_MS` (default `1000`) doubled per
attempt.
- The budget **resets on any successful JSON-RPC response** — proof the
server is actually live — so a server that recovers regains full
patience, while one that keeps dying hits the cap and stays down (then
restart pi).
- Why the long init timeout and bounded respawn compose rather than
overlap: once a server has opened the palace once, the OS page cache is
warm, so respawn cold-opens are fast. The long init timeout prevents
killing a healthy *first* cold-open; the respawn handles a genuinely
dead server cheaply afterwards. (Note the HNSW deserialize is CPU work
that isn't page-cacheable across spawns, which is exactly why we can't
rely on respawn-warming alone and keep the generous init budget.)
- The initial startup is tolerant too: if the very first `start()` fails,
the extension runs the same bounded respawn before falling back to
fail-soft (pi keeps working without palace tools).
## Debugging
- `MEMPALACE_EXT_DEBUG=1` — surface `mempalace-mcp` stderr into pi's
stderr. Without this, stderr is drained silently so a misbehaving
server doesn't flood the TUI.
- If a tool call fails with a generic "Internal tool error", spawn
`mempalace-mcp` manually with raw JSON-RPC on stdin to read the
server-side error — much faster than guessing.
## The `Type.Unsafe` gotcha
Earlier versions of this extension registered every MCP tool with
`parameters: Type.Object({}, { additionalProperties: true })`, which
discarded each tool's real `inputSchema`. The LLM then saw no parameter
names and had to guess, leading to bugs like `mempalace_diary_read`
being called with `agent=` instead of the required `agent_name=` and
crashing the Python server with `TypeError: missing 1 required
positional argument`.
The fix (≈ lines 160-170) is to wrap the incoming JSON Schema with
`Type.Unsafe<...>(tool.inputSchema)`. TypeBox schemas are plain JSON
Schema at runtime plus a `Symbol` marker, so wrapping an
externally-sourced schema with `Unsafe` is sufficient — no conversion
to a full TypeBox tree is needed, and the LLM now sees every tool's
real parameter names.
If you ever need to re-loosen the schema for debugging, fall back to
the `Type.Object({}, { additionalProperties: true })` default only for
that specific tool, not globally.
---
## Deploying pi with mempalace on a new machine
This is the "pi + memory" recipe. For pi without mempalace, see
[`pi-toolkit`'s README](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/pi-toolkit/src/branch/main/README.md#deploying-pi-on-a-new-machine).
### 0. Prerequisites
- Shell: zsh + oh-my-zsh recommended (both toolkits install loaders into
`~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/`; bash works too, installers print the manual
`source` snippet).
- `git`, `node` ≥ 20, `uv`, `tmux` ≥ 3.2, pi installed upstream.
- AWS credentials reachable via `AWS_PROFILE` — only if using
`amazon-bedrock` as pi's provider.
### 1. Dotfiles (if you keep one)
Brings `~/.config/pi/.env` (AWS creds, git-crypt encrypted), tmux CSI-u
extended keys, and other machine state:
```bash
git clone <your-dotfiles> ~/src/dotfiles
cd ~/src/dotfiles
git-crypt unlock <key>
./provision.sh --profile <profile> # or your equivalent tool
```
### 2. Install pi upstream
```bash
brew install pi-coding-agent # macOS
# or see https://github.com/earendil-works/pi for Linux
pi --help # creates ~/.pi/agent/
```
### 3. Install pi-toolkit (base pi config)
```bash
git clone ssh://git@gitea.jordbo.se:2222/joakimp/pi-toolkit.git ~/pi-toolkit
cd ~/pi-toolkit && ./install.sh
```
Symlinks `keybindings.json`, copies `pi-env.zsh` into
`~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/`, and prints the `settings.json` bootstrap command.
### 4. Bootstrap pi settings
```bash
cp ~/pi-toolkit/settings.example.json ~/.pi/agent/settings.json
$EDITOR ~/.pi/agent/settings.json # eu./us./anthropic: prefix
```
### 5. Install mempalace CLI + this toolkit
```bash
uv tool install mempalace
git clone ssh://git@gitea.jordbo.se:2222/joakimp/mempalace-toolkit.git ~/mempalace-toolkit
cd ~/mempalace-toolkit && ./install.sh
```
Detects pi, symlinks `mempalace.ts` into `~/.pi/agent/extensions/`.
Also detects pi-toolkit artifacts and prints a green check (or a warning
telling you to install pi-toolkit first if you skipped step 3).
### 6. Register mempalace MCP with opencode (if applicable)
Skip if this box is pi-only. Otherwise:
- Install [`opencode-toolkit`](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/opencode-toolkit) so `~/.config/opencode/.env` is sourced into every shell (GitHub / Gitea / other MCP server tokens).
- Register the mempalace MCP server in `~/.config/opencode/opencode.json` — see [root README § Registering mempalace with opencode](../../README.md#registering-mempalace-with-opencode-or-other-mcp-clients).
### 7. First run
```bash
exec zsh
pi # should start with defaults; wake-up injection shows palace status
```
If the wake-up doesn't print, run `MEMPALACE_EXT_DEBUG=1 pi` to surface
`mempalace-mcp` stderr.
### Verification checklist
```bash
# MCP bridge in place
ls -la ~/.pi/agent/extensions/mempalace.ts # → this repo
# pi-toolkit artifacts also in place
ls -la ~/.pi/agent/keybindings.json # → pi-toolkit
ls -la ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/pi-env.zsh # cp from pi-toolkit
# Env loaded
zsh -ic 'echo $AWS_PROFILE $AWS_REGION'
# Palace reachable
mempalace status
```
### Uninstall
```bash
cd ~/mempalace-toolkit && ./install.sh --uninstall --yes # bridge only
cd ~/pi-toolkit && ./install.sh --uninstall --yes # pi base config
# Leaves pi itself, mempalace CLI, and ~/.config/pi/.env alone.
```
---
## File layout
```
mempalace-toolkit/
└── extensions/
└── pi/
├── README.md ← this file
└── mempalace.ts ← symlinked into ~/.pi/agent/extensions/
```
Pi base config (keybindings, env loader, settings template) lives in
[`pi-toolkit`](https://gitea.jordbo.se/joakimp/pi-toolkit). `install.sh`
detects pi via `~/.pi/agent/extensions/` and runs a `check_pi_toolkit`
probe that warns if pi-toolkit's artifacts are missing.