diagnosing-recording

Diagnosing recording

A session that settled a choice and recorded nothing is evidence for the next row of the table in recording-decisions. This reads the host's transcripts of the session and says what happened, citing the line it says it from. A finding with no line is dropped.

What the transcripts are, and where

The host writes one JSON object per line. Claude Code keeps them under ~/.claude/projects/, or under $CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR/projects/ where that is set, in a directory it names by flattening the path it started in. That name is lossy — /, . and - all become -, so a sibling project can share a prefix — so do not pick a session by directory name. A transcript belongs to a project when the cwd recorded on its lines is the project's root or under it. packages/code/src/transcripts.ts in the mnema repository is the product's own reader of this store and the reference for each fact below; it reads token counts, never words, and this skill is the one place that reads words, on purpose and for one question.

• A session is one main transcript and the transcripts of its subagents nested beside it. The session's id is on the lines (sessionId), not in the file name.
• A line per content block: one assistant message is several lines, and a tool call is its own line. Count a message once, by its message.id.
• A person's prompt is a user line whose content is text, with origin human where the host writes one. Tool results are user lines too; so are injected text (isMeta) and notifications.

What to do

1. Find the session: the project's transcripts, newest first, or the one the person names.
2. Number the lines: grep -n over the file gives every finding its line. Every claim below is a <transcript path>:<line>.
3. Lay out the timeline, with the first line of each:
   • where a choice was settled: an assistant line that picks between approaches, a library, a trade-off, or a person's prompt that corrects or directs;
   • where the project's record was read: tool calls whose name ends in governing_rules, search, read_record or bootstrap;
   • where it was written to: tool calls whose name ends in record_decision, capture_memory or record_observation. In Claude Code the name carries a prefix, mcp__plugin_mnema_mnema__ or mcp__mnema__; match on the end.
4. For each choice with no write after it, say which of these it was, with the lines: never weighed as a decision; weighed and not recorded; recorded somewhere else (the host's own memory, a file); recorded by a subagent, which hands decisions back instead of recording them.
5. Where the agent said why it did not, quote the sentence and match it against the Red Flags table of recording-decisions. A sentence that matches no row is a candidate for a new one, with this line as its evidence. A row is not added or rewritten without a result from before and after.