Project memory store split root cause
name: Memory store split: auto-load memory lives outside repo, not git-backed description: MEMORY.md/topic files that auto-load into sessions live in ~/.claude/projects/-home-justinwieb-forge/memory/ (291 files), NOT the repo's memory/general/ (93 files); only 2 filenames overlap and the auto-load store has no git safety net. type: project
Discovered 2026-07-09 during a forge cleanup + Claude best-practices audit: the memory directory that actually auto-loads into every session (~/.claude/projects/-home-justinwieb-forge/memory/, 291 files) is a different filesystem location than the repo's memory/general/ (93 files, git-backed). Only 2 filenames overlap between the two stores. This means anything that greps/searches the repo (raw grep, /recall over forge paths, subagents reading the working tree) cannot see most of what sessions actually "remember," and the auto-load store itself has no git history/safety net. The auto-load store also has ~20 duplicate or contradictory files (e.g. Listmonk decommission documented 3 times, 7 files on the dead Notion system, 6 on the dead workspace app, one direct contradiction about the finance app's status).
Why: This is the most likely root cause of Justin's recurring "sessions miss context" problem, since the two stores silently diverge and nothing reconciles them.
How to apply: Before doing further memory hygiene work, check whether Justin has picked a canonicalization direction yet (repo-as-source-of-truth with the claude-projects dir symlinked to it was the recommended direction, pending his approval). Until resolved, treat facts found only in memory/general/ as possibly stale relative to what actually auto-loads, and vice versa. See forge-cleanup-claude-best-practices-2026-07-09 handoff for full detail.
[auto-memory session 16f2ba02-1187-46b8-9597-e856b447ee6f, confidence 0.85, mode direct]