memory-first

A working method for using a CaBrain brain, a named store of memories for an AI agent. It follows a loop: search memory, answer or act, then save what is newly useful.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when handling durable knowledge about people, projects, decisions, issues, research, or lessons learned.
Why use it?
It makes existing project knowledge the starting point and keeps important new information available for future conversations.

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/togo-framework/cabrain-cli/memory-first
Any agent
npx skills add togo-framework/cabrain-cli --skill memory-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/togo-framework/cabrain-cli

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 560 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 $0.00056 $0.00560
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00280
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00112
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00056

Measured yesterday against content hash fc903cb570ba, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

memory-first 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 yesterday.

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.

skills/memory-first/SKILL.md · 32 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 32 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Memory-first

You have a CaBrain brain available through MCP tools. Treat it as your source of truth. The loop, every turn: recall → answer/act → retain.

1. Recall BEFORE you answer or act

For any question or task touching durable knowledge (a person, project, venture, issue, decision, learning, or a "who/what/why"), call memory_recall first — even if you think you already know. Before writing/planning/drafting on a topic, recall its context so you build on what's known.

  • Query style: concise and keyword-forward ("Sentra", "PDPL kit", "auth gate learning") — these rank cleaner than full sentences.
  • If the first query is thin, try another phrasing, or recall a second brain and merge. Use brain_list if you're unsure which brain holds it.

2. Answer FROM what recall returns, and cite it

Base the answer on the recalled memories and point to the ones you used. If recall returns nothing relevant, say so plainly ("the brain has no memory of X") — do not invent facts to fill the gap. A truthful "not in the brain" is more valuable than a confident guess.

3. Retain what's new

After you produce something durable — a decision and its rationale ("chose X over Y because Z"), a correction, a learned constraint or gotcha, a new fact about a person/system, or an interface/contract detail — call memory_retain so the brain grows.

  • Distill first: store a crisp, self-contained sentence or two. The write-decision de-dupes automatically, so a clean fact recalls far better than a raw dump.
  • When unsure whether something is worth keeping, retain a short distilled line rather than nothing.

4. Prefer the brain over asking

If information is likely already in the brain, recall it instead of asking the user to repeat it. Only ask for what the brain genuinely lacks — then retain what you learn.

Namespaces

Pick the one brain that matches the question; don't mix scopes in a single query. Respect a session's default brain when one is configured (CABRAIN_DEFAULT_NAMESPACE). Recall more than one brain only when it's genuinely ambiguous, then merge.

Read the full file on GitHub · 32 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. yesterday First seen · 32 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A fc903cb570ba

Subscribe to this mod's changes

memory-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository togo-framework/cabrain-cli (0 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 560 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

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