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S T A R T S E S S I O N
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file-based memory for ai assistants
claude cowork · codex A memory system for everyone else.
Persistent, file-based memory for AI-assisted workflows. Give your assistant lasting context about who you are, how you work, and where each project stands — without databases, cloud sync, or repeated setup.
This isn't for developers and SWEs. It's for the rest of us: people running six ongoing projects at once who are tired of re-explaining themselves at the top of every session.
/plugin marketplace add mijinyawah/start-session /plugin install start-session@start-session /setup▋ A folder of markdown files and a set of slash commands that read and write them. /start-session orients your assistant before you begin — what's active, where things stand, what you said last time. /end-session saves progress, updates status, and rewrites next steps. That's the entire mechanism. No database, no vector store, no service to sign into.
Because the memory is just files on your disk, you can read it, edit it, diff it, and delete it. If the tool disappears tomorrow, the context stays.
Every conversation starts cold. On a project that runs for weeks — a site rebuild, a bot, a video pipeline — that's a structural problem, not an inconvenience. I was spending the first ten minutes of every session re-establishing what we'd already decided, and getting worse answers because I'd inevitably leave something out.
So the fix was boring and durable: write it down in a place the assistant reads automatically. The document is the continuity layer, not the model.
First-time onboarding. Runs a nine-step flow and generates your workspace files.
Orients the assistant to your active projects before you begin work.
Saves progress, updates project status, and sets clear next steps.
Mid-session save without ending the session.
Kicks off a new tracked project with a context file and an index entry.
Explains what changed since your last update in plain language, then adds missing sections. Additive only — never overwrites.
Identity, tools, preferences, hard rules, agent index. The primary context file.
Thin pointer to CLAUDE.md — read by Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Copilot.
Thin pointer for Gemini CLI, which looks for this filename instead.
Single source of truth for every project across every state.
Terms, acronyms and shorthand the assistant should recognise.
Per-project context and phased-execution templates.
Per-project folders created by /new-project.
Install the plugin. Commands available as /setup, /start-session and the rest.
Same plugin, same commands, in the terminal.
Auto-discover AGENTS.md, which points at CLAUDE.md.
Same AGENTS.md convention — it has become genuinely cross-tool.
Auto-discovers GEMINI.md, walking up to the project root.
Cline doesn't read AGENTS.md natively as of this writing — it needs its own .clinerules file, or a symlink to one.
Plugin logic updates on its own. Workspace files can't retrofit themselves, so /start-session quietly checks a version marker and mentions it once if you've drifted. Run /migrate when you're ready — it explains what's new in plain language, asks before touching anything, and only ever adds. Nothing existing gets removed or overwritten.