backstory CLAUDE.md

backstory CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from arpitkath/backstory. It costs 723 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A repository guide for Backstory, a local memory tool for Git repositories. It saves coding-session history as Markdown files and links that history to commits, which are saved versions in Git.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect why a commit or file changed, attach or dump session history, develop the command-line tool, and run its tests.
Why use it?
It explains how sessions are captured, attached, compared, and read without relying on Git hooks, and shows how to run the tool directly from source.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md.

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add instructions/arpitkath/backstory/claude-md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/arpitkath/backstory

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for backstory CLAUDE.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/arpitkath/backstory/claude-md.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/arpitkath/backstory/claude-md)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/arpitkath/backstory/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/arpitkath/backstory/claude-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 723 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 723 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00723 $0.00723
Opus 5 $0.00362 $0.00362
Sonnet 5 $0.00145 $0.00145
Haiku 4.5 $0.00072 $0.00072

Measured 6d ago against content hash 8b6b567e3f2c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

backstory CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 104 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 104 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md

Repository instructions for Claude-based work in this repo.

Project Summary

Backstory is a local-first AI memory layer for Git repositories. It stores session history as OKF markdown under .backstory/knowledge/ and links that memory to commits. Capture should come from tool-native hooks, callbacks, or transcript exporters, not from Git hooks.

Current State

  • Session persistence uses OKF markdown, not JSON.
  • Pending sessions live at .backstory/knowledge/sessions/latest.md.
  • Attached sessions live as stable .md files in the same directory.
  • backstory diff can warn about likely contradictions with previous sessions.
  • backstory dump is the ingestion step used by tool integrations.

Development (source-only)

Run the CLI directly from the source tree — no pip install needed.

# Run the backstory CLI from local source
python -m backstory <command>

# Run tests
PYTHONPATH=src python -m pytest -q

Important Commands

Useful CLI commands (requires installation or python -m backstory):

backstory init
backstory attach HEAD
backstory why HEAD
backstory file <path>
backstory line <path>:<line>
backstory range <path>:<start>-<end>
backstory code <path>:<start>-<end>
backstory diff
backstory status

Publishing (via GitHub Actions)

The package is published to PyPI as backstory-cli via GitHub Actions.

How to publish

  1. Bump version in pyproject.toml (semver: bugfix → patch, new feature → minor, breaking → major)
  2. Commit and push the version bump
  3. Create a GitHub Release from the pushed tag — the publish.yml workflow auto-deploys

Workflow

  • Trigger: on: release: [published]
  • Uses trusted publishing (OIDC) — no tokens to manage
  • Dry-run: gh workflow run publish.yml -f dry_run=true

Manual publish (fallback)

If CI is down, publish from local:

pip install build twine
python -m build
twine upload dist/backstory_cli-*

Requires a PyPI API token from https://pypi.org/manage/account/token.

Read the full file on GitHub · 104 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 104 lines · 723 tokens per session scan A 8b6b567e3f2c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

backstory CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository arpitkath/backstory (10 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 723 tokens to every session, about $0.0036 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.