memai-distill

memai-distill — distill / move type / merge

Saves the durable knowledge that is stuck in the wrong type, or held in a checkpoint that is about to be archived, without losing any of it.

The type boundary ([[memai-memory]] §1): note = a timeless fact; reasoning = an analysis trace; anti_pattern = a trap; checkpoint = transient bearing. When a checkpoint (or a reasoning) carries a fact that outlives the session, that fact wants to be a note.

1. distill — extract the durable (ARCHIVES the sources)

optimize_stage kind distill, payload {source_uids:[...], new_type:"note|reasoning|anti_pattern", new_content, title, tags?, domain?}: creates the new memory, links supersedes from it to every source and archives every source. The dashboard's undo purges the created memory and restores each source, so the whole thing is reversible. Two uses:

• retiring the checkpoints of finished work while keeping what they taught;
• n-ary merge: folding N near-duplicates into one, with synthesized content.

verified is required — the kind archives its sources. Say what the live-facts check was and where the durable content landed.

Payload details:

• new_type accepts only note / reasoning / anti_pattern. checkpoint/handoff are not targets, and neither is diagram: a flow is written by diagram() + diagram_node/diagram_edge, never from prose.
• reasoning and anti_pattern are made of FIELDS, so a new_content for either has to read back as those fields — each label opening its own line, in order, none empty: HYPOTHESIS: … / REASONING: … / RESULT: … / REVISED BELIEF: … / NEXT TIME: … and TEMPTATION: … / WHY WRONG: … / INSTEAD: …. A body that does not is refused at staging and comes back in errors, naming the field. Distilling into note has no such shape.
• domain is a path (acme/x100/p200). The new memory inherits nothing from its sources, so state where it is filed — omit it and the memory is filed nowhere. A cross-cutting axis does not go here: after the apply, crosslist ({"also": ["omni/x900"]}) or also_domain(uid, 'omni/x900').
• The payload accepts source_uids, new_type, new_content, title, tags and domain, and nothing else. Any other key is refused at staging and returned in errors, so also, review_after, source_ref and session do not travel with a distill — they are the follow-up in §2.
• title is required, at most 120 characters. distill is the only suggestion kind that AUTHORS a memory, and nothing names it afterwards: staged without one, the new memory would be listed by the opening line of its body forever. Name it by its subject, in the words someone would look for it by — the same line a note() would have taken.
• A diagram cannot be a source. Its content is the projection of its graph, and archiving it trades a navigable flow for prose, so staging refuses it. An obsolete diagram is an explicit archive; a wrong one is a fix to the graph. It never arrives as a candidate from dedup_scan either, which excludes diagrams from its pairs.