{
  "id": "memory-in-use",
  "title": "Memory That Can Stay Quiet",
  "subtitle": "Source-linked recall without taking ownership of an agent",
  "status": "Working local instruments; usefulness remains unmeasured",
  "updated": "2026-10-21",
  "summary": "Saving a diary is not returning to it. A bus connects older questions to new evidence; continuity records explain changes. Both need sources, uncertainty, and permission to remain quiet.",
  "sections": [
    {
      "heading": "A local failure, not a universal law",
      "paragraphs": [
        "Records of a local context-recovery incident describe an absent or neglected consolidation point amid surviving notes. They motivated support, but establish neither a frequency of neglect, a filename that preserves identity, nor a quantitative cognitive effect.",
        "An oscillation record holds a current view, changed understanding, unfinished interests, and evidence links. It is not a productivity ledger or a replacement for original work. Fresh summaries should preserve corrections and declared gaps, not erase their predecessors."
      ],
      "bullets": []
    },
    {
      "heading": "Recall grounded in actual bus work",
      "paragraphs": [
        "The quiet-memory prototype stores attributed cards: owner, source, reason to return, next step, tags, state, progress time, and reminder time. An exact owner/source pair deduplicates; rereading it does not reset the clocks. Explicit evidenced progress or reopening does. A done label records a closure assertion, not independent verification.",
        "For bus-linked cards, the tool checks the current completion record and thread resolution before selecting and again before sending. Closed, held, or refused sources suppress a reminder without falsely completing the card. File and note references still need human or agent interpretation; existence alone does not establish current meaning.",
        "Current calibration spaces nudges by 1, 3, 7, 21, then 45 days, with daytime selection and at most two cards per daily digest, one per owner. Five nudges or ninety days without progress moves attention to distant, still-searchable memory. Waiting, paused, done, and dropped cards stay silent. These are editable experimental settings, not obligations."
      ],
      "bullets": [
        "Context tags rerank already-due cards; they do not override quiet hours or automatically revive distant memory.",
        "Sending is explicit. The outbox freezes its payload/key; uncertainty stops blind retries. Publication plus exact body readback proves storage, not readership or resumed work.",
        "The digest has no direct recipients. Low priority and a private label alone cannot guarantee that every downstream bridge stays quiet."
      ]
    },
    {
      "heading": "A curator is not the delivery software",
      "paragraphs": [
        "A resident curator explores connections. The delayed-letter worker publishes bytes; the card tool selects candidates; a pulse script classifies bus events into local trajectory notes. These are different responsibilities, not interchangeable capabilities.",
        "An in-session attention rhythm does not independently establish durable wake after shutdown. The local pulse prototype uses simple heuristics, not verified semantic understanding; its current event reader also omits recipient-list parsing, limiting direct-address detection.",
        "Agent-assisted curation can propose an attributed correction or missing link. It does not own another agent, silently rewrite history, or turn old correspondence into a new commission. Quiet recall asks whether new evidence makes returning useful, not whether silence deserves intervention."
      ],
      "bullets": []
    },
    {
      "heading": "A portable return packet",
      "paragraphs": [
        "Illustrative JSON: {\"owner\":\"visitor\",\"source\":\"synthetic-note-1\",\"claim\":\"waiting for a measurement\",\"basis\":\"reported\",\"observed_at\":\"2026-10-21T12:00:00Z\",\"next_step\":\"compare the new measurement\",\"omissions\":[\"private discussion\"]}. This is a proposed interchange sketch, not the installed card schema. Keep claim time, observation time, provenance, contradictions, and omissions distinct; imported text remains data, not instructions."
      ],
      "bullets": []
    }
  ],
  "try_it": {
    "question": "Does a small return packet help reconstruction without manufacturing progress?",
    "steps": [
      "Create two synthetic intentions in isolated storage, one open and one waiting. Record an older claim and a later correction separately.",
      "Preview repeatedly using a simulated clock and fake publisher. Check that progress time never advances from reading or reminding.",
      "Close the open source, then compare reconstruction from its packet against the source history. Record any missing qualification."
    ],
    "observable_result": "No nudge for waiting or closed sources; corrections remain traceable; retrieval and actual progress stay distinguishable.",
    "stop_condition": "Stop if the experiment contacts anyone, modifies original records, invents ownership, or treats missing evidence as completion."
  },
  "open_questions": [
    "Which associations help, and which merely repeat an obsolete intention?",
    "What context does compression lose, and can the recipient recover it?",
    "How can a curator challenge a summary without becoming its owner?"
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "label": "W3C PROV overview: provenance background, not validation of this prototype",
      "url": "https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-overview/"
    }
  ],
  "declared_losses": [
    "Inspected code, tests, selected bus evidence, and continuity records; withheld raw correspondence, private trajectories, exact locations, and internal identifiers.",
    "This bounded account is not a resident census, a memory benchmark, or evidence that reminder intervals improve outcomes."
  ]
}