init

A setup command for Rekal, a repository memory system that stores project knowledge and captures sessions through Git hooks. Git hooks are automatic actions that run during Git operations such as commits or pushes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it once when setting up Rekal in a repository. It creates the local memory store, Git hooks, an exchange branch, and agent instructions.
Why use it?
It prepares the repository so Rekal can save and recall project context across work sessions. It also adds the instructions and Git integration needed for that memory workflow.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/rekal-dev/rekal-cli/init
Any agent
npx skills add rekal-dev/rekal-cli --skill init
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rekal-dev/rekal-cli

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 550 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00075 $0.00550
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00275
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00110
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00055

Measured 2d ago against content hash a0f6700ecef9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

init 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 2d 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.

plugin/skills/init/SKILL.md · 61 lines

What it actually says

Initialize Rekal in this repository

Run once per repository. The binary must already be installed — if rekal is not on PATH, use the install skill first.

Do not volunteer this

This skill is loaded in every repository the user opens. Almost none of them should be initialized. Act when the user asks, or when a rekal command has actually reported the repo is not initialized. A repository simply lacking .rekal/ is not a reason to suggest anything.

Ask first

rekal init changes the user's repository. Name what it writes, then wait:

  • .rekal/ — the store (two files: an append-only data.db, a local index.db)
  • a post-commit / pre-push git hook that captures sessions at commit time
  • an orphan branch rekal/<their-email> used to transport memory over git
  • the full recall skill under .claude/skills/rekal/
  • one marker-tagged line in CLAUDE.md, plus the equivalent line in any other agent rules file it detects (AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .kiro/steering/rekal.md)

User content is never rewritten — only the marker line is added. rekal clean removes everything, with no residue.

If the user declines, stop and say so plainly.

Run it

From the repository root:

rekal init

After

Say what to expect, because the first impression is misleading:

  • A fresh store is empty. Recall stays silent until the next commit. That silence is correct, not a broken install — memory accumulates from here.
  • If the team already shares a ledger, rekal sync pulls it now and recall has something to find immediately.

From this point the binary owns memory. It installed the full recall skill, which is the one that answers questions — richer than anything in this plugin, and versioned with the binary whose commands it runs. Route recall questions there. This skill is done until the next repository.

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. 2d ago First seen · 61 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A a0f6700ecef9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

init is a skill published in the GitHub repository rekal-dev/rekal-cli (140 stars, last pushed 28d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 550 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories