Context and memory

What the council can see, and what SAMI remembers.

The council works from three layers of context: a shared run context that every stage reads, a slice picked for the stage at hand, and recall of anything said earlier in the run.

Context engine

Hybrid retrieval blends semantic, keyword and code intelligence into one project-context stream the council can draw on.

Semantic· meaning-based searchKeyword· exact-term searchCode intelligence· workspace grounding

per-stage slice
01Understand & Contractrecalled later
per-stage slice
02Plan
per-stage slice
03Build
per-stage slice
04Hardenlooks back ↩
per-stage slice
05Acceptance

Shared baseline contextevery stage reads this, the whole run

Cross-stage recall — any model can look back at earlier council context

Shared baseline context — every stage reads it
Per-stage context slice — pulled on top into each stage
Cross-stage recall — look back at earlier council context

What the council can see

The council reads your project through the desktop app. Every Guardian may read files; only the Writer changes them. On paid plans, each run also carries a map of your project's file paths: the paths only, never the contents.

If your workspace has a SAMI.md or AGENTS.md file at its root, the council reads it with every run as your project's conventions: build commands, style rules, boundaries. When both exist, SAMI.md is used.

Adding context yourself

Type an @-mention in the War Room composer to attach context to your task:

@-mentions
Mention	Attaches
`@file <path>`	The content of that file. Without a path, the file open in the editor.
`@folder <path>`	A listing of that folder.
`@codebase`	The names of your most recently changed files.
`@docs`	The CLAUDE.md guidance files in your workspace.
`@git`	Your current branch and last commit message.

What SAMI remembers

Within a run: everything said in it. Any model can look back at what another model said in an earlier stage.
Across runs on the same project, on paid plans: the key decisions of earlier runs.
On your machine: your War Room chat history, and a local memory file. The settings sami.memory.maxEntries (1000 entries by default) and sami.memory.retentionDays (90 days by default) decide how much of it is kept.