agents-remember

Carry Memory From a Branch

Use this guide when a protected official code branch gets delayed or batched merges, while richer onboarding has accumulated on another branch (a personal workbench, a feature branch, or a branch handled in a reconciliation pass).

c-11-memory-carryover-from-branch is not a Git merge. It is a selective memory reconciliation: it proves which source-branch code changes have actually landed on the official branch, then carries only the corresponding onboarding into an open external-memory recovery leaf and refreshes its verification metadata to the official code commit. The recovery leaf closes and integrates through the normal code/memory lifecycle.

When to use it

• Official memory is missing richer onboarding that exists on another branch, and
• the code those onboarding files describe has (at least partly) landed on the official branch.

If the code did not land on official, its memory is not carried — that is the whole point.

Plan, then apply

Start a recovery leaf from the landed code/memory source pair. Run the plan against its contract and review the candidate report; only then apply under the applicable approval.

memory_carryover_plan(repo_id="<repo-id>", contract_path="<open-recovery-leaf-contract>", source_memory="<source-memory-repo>",
  official_code_ref="<official-ref>", source_code_ref="<source-ref>", old_base="<base-ref-or-sha>")

memory_carryover_apply(repo_id="<repo-id>", contract_path="<open-recovery-leaf-contract>", source_memory="<source-memory-repo>",
  official_code_ref="<official-ref>", source_code_ref="<source-ref>", old_base="<base-ref-or-sha>",
  intent_note="<developer intent>")

apply mutates only the recovery leaf’s ordinary memory worktree. It does not move code or protected memory refs, and it refreshes carried onboarding to the official code commit. Close and integrate the recovery leaf normally to land those changes.

Evidence tiers

Each candidate onboarding file is classified by how strongly its code is proven to have landed:

Tier	Meaning	Auto-carry?
exact-landed-commit	a source commit that touched the path is an ancestor of official	yes
patch-id-match	the old-base→source patch matches the old-base→official patch	yes
final-content-match	source-ref content equals official-ref content for the path	yes
same-path-changed	both branches changed the path, but equivalence not proven	review-required
not-landed	changed on source but not on official	skipped

Only proven tiers auto-carry. same-path-changed is review-required by default — another developer may have changed the same file independently.

Output states

• would-carryover — dry-run plan with candidate decisions
• carried-over — a recovery-leaf memory-content commit was created with Code-Commit attribution
• nothing-to-carryover — no selected candidate changed recovery-leaf memory
• blocked — apply requested without approval, an open recovery-leaf contract, a clean exact landed code base, or required candidate data

The ignored memory.md consumer cache is regenerated from memory commit trailers, without staging or committing it. Missing, stale, or malformed cache data does not block carryover. When content does not change, the actual memory commit is retained; a new official code SHA does not trigger a mapping-only commit. Historical attribution rewrites remain explicit deployment work.

Boundaries

• Never carries memory for code that did not land on official.
• Derives the ledger cache from target memory history; source cache rows are not copied or trusted.
• Refreshes carried onboarding metadata to the official commit.
• Does not auto-carry same-path-changed evidence.
• The c-02-memory-quality-control skill remains the branch-accuracy drift detector; carryover only imports memory whose code validity is proven or explicitly approved.

Related: Adopt Existing Memory (the c-10-adopt-memory-baseline skill) creates the accepted memory baseline; carryover (the c-11-memory-carryover-from-branch skill) keeps existing official memory enriched as branch work lands.

This site is open source. Improve this page.