claude-self-reflect

Claude Self-Reflect

Claude forgets everything. This fixes that.

Single 44MB binary. No databases. No containers. No API keys required.

Install | How It Works | MCP Tools | Paper | FAQ

v9.4 — Multi-Source Memory CSR now remembers more than transcripts: task outcomes, plan documents, and a cross-project session registry — each absorbed at the lifecycle stage it belongs to. Episodes carry real task state again (Claude Code's TodoWrite→TaskCreate rename had silently emptied them — found, fixed, and guarded with schema-miss telemetry). Sub-millisecond search, ~150ms cached startup, 720+ tests, zero external dependencies. Release notes

Table of Contents

• The Problem — Why Claude needs memory
• The Architecture — How CSR solves it
• The Pipeline — Progressive enrichment (9.3x improvement)
• The Paper — The research behind the retrieval design (preprint)
• Install — One-command install, consent-first activation
• What You'll Ask — Natural language, no syntax
• Performance | MCP Tools | Hooks | CLI
• AI Narratives | Upgrading | Troubleshooting

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The Forgetting Problem

Claude starts fresh every session. Solutions you found, architectures you designed, bugs you debugged — all gone.

Context retention drops below 20% after 10 sessions. CSR fixes this with a single binary that gives Claude perfect memory.

No special syntax. No commands. Install once, and past context appears automatically when you need it.

Explore the full documentation →

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One Binary. 44MB.

Everything runs locally in a single process. No Docker, no database server, no API keys required.

• SQLite — storage for chunks, embeddings, enrichment state
• HNSW — sub-millisecond vector search (<1ms p95)
• FastEmbed — 384-dim local embeddings
• AST — code-aware search across 6 languages

6 hooks fire across the session lifecycle. 15 MCP tools for explicit search — including csr_code_graph, linking code symbols to the conversations that shaped them.

Explore the full documentation →

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The Pipeline

Three layers progressively improve search quality from raw chunks to AI-enriched narratives — 9.3x improvement.

Higher quality context. Better decisions. Fewer tokens.

Explore the full documentation →

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The Paper

CSR's retrieval design is documented in a research preprint, measured on the system's own development history:

Similarity Drowns Intent: Three-Trace Sagas and Reinstatement Recall for Provenance in Agentic Software Construction 2026 — PDF

Ask a memory system "why did we drop Qdrant?" and cosine similarity returns a recording of you asking that question earlier, at 0.984 similarity. The decision itself scores lower than its own echoes. The paper measures this failure, the multi-hop walk built to counter it (+53% and +47% ground-truth session coverage over one-shot kNN on two corpora, pre-registered gates, blind cross-vendor judging), and a second finding that fell out of evaluation: a self-recording memory system ingests its own eval dialogue and drowns the answers it's being tested on. It also keeps its negative results — a pre-registered ratification-weighting hypothesis died at ρ≈0 and forbade an entire staleness design.

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Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ramakay/claude-self-reflect/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Downloads the binary (SHA256-verified), then asks before activating. Setup — which registers the MCP server, installs 6 hooks, and imports your conversations — only runs with your consent. Restart Claude Code after.

Non-interactive installs never activate on their own: set CSR_AUTO_SETUP=1 to opt in, or run csr-engine setup yourself.

Platform	Support
macOS (Apple Silicon)	Prebuilt binary
Linux x86_64 / WSL	Prebuilt binary
Linux ARM64	Prebuilt binary
macOS (Intel)	Build from source

npm install -g claude-self-reflect
csr-engine setup   # activation is a separate, explicit step

By default npm install only downloads the checksummed binary — it does not touch ~/.claude or index conversations. Activation happens when you run csr-engine setup, or set CSR_AUTO_SETUP=1 during install to opt in.

git clone https://github.com/ramakay/claude-self-reflect.git
cd claude-self-reflect/csr-engine
cargo build --release
cp target/release/csr-engine ~/.local/bin/
csr-engine setup

• "How did we solve re-renders on this component?"
• "What did we tell Joe about that commit?"
• "What were our frustrations with this approach?"
• "Where did we put the auth middleware config?"

No special syntax. No commands. CSR finds relevant past context and injects it automatically.

Metric	Value
Cached startup	~150ms (p50, 54K-chunk index)
Search latency (p95)	<1ms
Binary size	44MB
Import speed	~20 conversations/sec
Embedding	0.73ms/text (batch)

All tools include MCP tool annotations so Claude Code understands their safety characteristics.

Tool	Description	Safety
csr_reflect_on_past	Semantic search across past conversations	read-only
store_reflection	Store insights for future retrieval	writes
csr_quick_check	Fast existence check (count + top match)	read-only
search_by_recency	Time-constrained search ("last week")	read-only
get_recent_work	"What did we work on?" with session grouping	read-only
get_timeline	Activity timeline with statistics	read-only
csr_search_by_file	Find conversations that touched a file	read-only
csr_search_by_concept	Theme-based search ("security", "testing")	read-only
csr_search_insights	Aggregated patterns from search results	read-only
csr_get_more	Paginate through additional results	read-only
get_full_conversation	Retrieve complete JSONL conversation	read-only
get_session_learnings	Iteration-level memory for Ralph loops	read-only
csr_code_graph	Which conversations shaped a function or file (AST anchors)	read-only
csr_why	Provenance chain — why does this code/decision exist	read-only
csr_resolve	Record verified verdicts (resolved/still_open/regressed) on chunks	writes

Hook	What it does
SessionStart	Surfaces relevant past context at conversation start
UserPromptSubmit	Predicts and injects context before Claude responds
PostToolUse	Tracks file edits with session-scoped dedup
Stop	Stores iteration learnings, detects stuck patterns
PreCompact	Backs up state before context compaction
SessionEnd	Stores session narrative for future retrieval

All hooks use catch-all error handling. They never block Claude Code.

Transform raw conversations into rich, searchable narratives. Requires an Anthropic API key.

csr-engine daemon

Metric	Without	With AI Narratives
Search quality	0.074	0.691 (9.3x)
Token compression	100%	18% (82% reduction)
Cost per conversation	-	~$0.012 (Batch API)

Token transparency: Optional AI narratives (session briefings + story extraction) run claude -p against your existing Claude subscription — smallest available model, capped prompts, debounced, and skipped entirely when nothing changed. Every call — including failures and timeouts — is counted: csr-engine status shows calls and tokens spent today; cache read/creation tokens (often the majority of real usage) are tracked separately in the status JSON (cache_tokens_today / cache_tokens_total). Disable anytime with CSR_NO_AI_NARRATIVES=1; pin a model with CSR_NARRATIVE_MODEL=<model>.

csr-engine                     Start MCP server (default)
csr-engine setup               One-shot setup: import + MCP + hooks
csr-engine status              System status (JSON)
csr-engine status --compact    One-line statusline output
csr-engine daemon              Background enrichment daemon
csr-engine hook install --apply Install Claude Code hooks
csr-engine eval                Quick eval (5 tests)
csr-engine eval --full         Full eval (20 tests)
csr-engine quality <file>      AST-based code quality analysis

v8.0 replaces the Python/Docker stack with a single Rust binary.

docker compose down 2>/dev/null
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ramakay/claude-self-reflect/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Your conversation data (~/.claude/projects/) is untouched. The new engine re-imports from the same JSONL files.

Symptom	Fix
No search results	Run csr-engine setup
MCP tools not available	Run csr-engine setup, restart Claude Code
"spawn ENOENT" in MCP	Ensure csr-engine is in PATH
Slow first startup	Normal (~14s for index rebuild, subsequent: ~150ms)

Full guide: Documentation

claude mcp remove claude-self-reflect
rm -rf ~/.claude-self-reflect/
rm ~/.local/bin/csr-engine
npm uninstall -g claude-self-reflect  # if installed via npm

• @TheGordon - Fixed timestamp parsing (#10)
• @akamalov - Ubuntu WSL insights
• @kylesnowschwartz - Security review (#6)

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Documentation | npm | Issues | MIT License