Epitype

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Epitype is a memory governance layer for CLI agents.

It keeps the host's native memory as the storage authority, then adds the structure, timing, action gates, and evidence needed for remembered rules to affect later behavior.

An agent can retrieve the right fact and still break the rule attached to it. Epitype focuses on that gap:

• a replaced decision should not return as current;
• an incident lesson should reach the tool action where it matters;
• a permission should remain attributable to the person who gave it;
• a memory failure should be visible and testable.

Epitype currently supports Claude Code and Codex. It uses only the Python standard library and does not require a hosted memory service.

How it works

Epitype connects the same native vaults to five host events:

Injected memory remains advisory. It cannot override system or developer instructions, bypass host permissions, or grant a tool authority by itself. Hook output is capped at 10 KiB and each hook has a ten-second fail-open deadline.

Capture: filed, or proposed

A trigger match proves a sentence looks like a ruling, not that anyone checked it, so capture files only what one of three shape templates admits — an arrow reply whose owner half opens with a short answer, a correction that opens the sentence, or a named first-person authorization. Everything else the rules still capture is written to <vault>/_drafts/captured_pending/YYYYMMDD/ instead: not indexed, not recalled, waiting for a person. Both kinds carry provenance: auto-captured and verified: false, and promotion means editing those fields (verified: true plus verified_by/verified_at) and moving the file — a replay refuses to do it.

No verified: false card is authority for anything: the Stop decision gate and the write gate both read cards that declare decision_key, which a captured card never does. Recall does not surface it at all: a captured quote is the bottom reading level, so memsearch returns it when an AI goes looking for the exact words, and the prompt hook injects cards only. Details and the measured trade in docs/FAILURE_MODES.md §32 and §41.

Governance beyond recall

Current decisions

Decision cards have a stable decision_key, an active or superseded status, an effective time, and a named decision source. Exactly one card should be active for each key. query, recall, and the prompt hook exclude superseded cards by default while retaining them for provenance. Use --include-superseded only when you want the history.

Scars, and what actually stops an action

A scar is an incident-born rule: the incident it came from and actionable advice that names the safer route. A card is context read back into a turn, not a refusal — it cannot stop a tool call, and a lexical pattern pretending otherwise produces both false denials and false confidence. Irreversible actions belong to the host's own native rules (Claude permissions.deny, Codex execpolicy), which refuse the call before it runs. Epitype refuses only content: the write gate below, and the Stop gate at the end of a turn.

Native-first installation

The installer merges only entries marked as Epitype, keeps detected native vaults, and writes backups before changing an existing host file. Stable shims let the repository move without rewriting every host registration. Uninstall removes Epitype-owned registrations and configuration while preserving native memory and vault cards.

Tidy-up that runs itself

The offline inventory pass ("the dream") does not wait to be remembered. By default (dream.mode: piggyback) a session start whose last dream is older than dream.interval_hours starts one detached, low-priority background process and returns without waiting; a pid-bearing lock, stale after 30 minutes, keeps a second one from starting. graft install --dream nightly [--at HH:MM] registers a daily system task instead (graft doctor shows the mode and the last completion; graft uninstall removes the task), and --dream off disables both. The run reads vaults and writes only <governance vault>/.epitype/ — review pack, state, log — inside a ten-minute budget, and the next session announces it in one line. Its last section is the feedback review pack: one row per card that owner events, gate blocks or exam failures point at, flagged once enough rows accumulate (memspec.REVIEW_PACK_TRIGGER, 5) that a review sitting is worth holding. It judges nothing and changes no card. No model is called: the model half of tidying stays manual, so an installed Epitype never spends model budget on its own.

Failure evidence

Missing indexes, stale indexes, shim failures, malformed cards, and lock contention have distinct outcomes. The hooks fail open when they cannot safely finish, and the installer doctor reports recorded shim outages instead of treating silence as health.

epitype gates <vault> [--since Nd|YYYY-MM-DD] [--json] [--by kind|decision|session|day] turns a vault's _GATE_LOG.jsonl into a read-only report of what the gates actually blocked, by kind, decision or scar card, day, and session, plus a same-session-same-card ≥3 hint for suspected false positives.

Quickstart

Requirements: Python 3.11 or newer and a Claude Code or Codex installation with hook support.

Install: pip install epitype. The epitype command exposes installation, search, lint, exam, and diagnostic tools; epitype-graft remains as a compatibility alias for the installer.

The @hungyu/epitype package on npm is only a signpost back to this Python project (npm rejects the bare name as too similar to an existing package).

Preview the planned changes:

epitype install --dry-run

If the preview contains only the hosts and paths you expect, install and run the synthetic health check:

epitype install
epitype doctor

The installer detects existing native vaults. If it finds none, it creates an empty fallback vault. Reinstall preserves a curated vault list; use epitype vaults --resync --dry-run and then rerun without --dry-run when you intentionally want to adopt the latest detection result.

Approve Codex hooks

Codex registration and Codex trust are separate. Check the real trust state after installation:

epitype trust

If any Epitype entry is UNTRUSTED, DISABLED, or MODIFIED:

• In the terminal UI, enter /hooks, press t to trust all entries in the panel, then press esc.
• In the Desktop app, open hooks need review or the Hooks panel and approve the Epitype entries for SessionStart, UserPromptSubmit, PreToolUse, PreCompact, and Stop.

Run the check again. Codex is ready only when it prints CODEX TRUST: PASS 5/5. doctor verifies registration and synthetic execution; it does not replace this trust check.

Choose a vault layout

Start from one of the tracked templates:

Search the local vault

Build a vault's local FTS index, then query it directly or recall against a prompt:

epitype search build C:\path\to\vault
epitype search query term --vault C:\path\to\vault
epitype search recall "natural-language prompt" --vault C:\path\to\vault

The generated database lives at <vault>/.epitype/memory_fts.sqlite3 and is ignored by Git. Only build creates a missing index. Existing indexes refresh incrementally when stale; a missing index is reported separately from a valid zero-result query.

Command reference

epitype <command> --help prints the full option list for any command below.

Everyday

Maintenance and batch

Verify this checkout

Run the public checks from the repository root:

python tests/run_all.py
python tests/privacy_lint.py
python exam/exam_runner.py --strict

tests/run_all.py currently runs 34 component selftests covering the core tools, hook adapters, package surface, installer, exam engine, and privacy gate. The included exam corpus is a small synthetic sample. For this release, the publication gate also passed a strict 300-case behavior corpus and a 15-seed review; those release materials are not part of this repository.

These checks are regression evidence, not proof that every future host version or every memory failure is covered.

Moving or removing Epitype

After moving the repository, update the stable shim target and rerun the doctor:

epitype relocate --to C:\path\to\new\repo

Preview uninstall before removing Epitype-owned files:

epitype uninstall --dry-run
epitype uninstall

Read Uninstall Epitype before restoring a backup manually.

Limits

• Hooks can govern only events and tools the host exposes. Direct file reads remain outside Epitype's current-decision filter.
• The time and output ceilings require selection; Epitype never injects the entire vault into every prompt.
• Epitype gates content, not actions: it never refuses a shell command or a read. Irreversible actions are the host's own native rules to refuse. Malformed cards fail open rather than taking control of the host.
• Claude Code and Codex are the tested host boundary. A host upgrade still needs integration testing.
• The bundled tests are synthetic. They exercise behavior and failure handling, not long-term field performance.

Documentation

• Architecture: memory blocks, retrieval routes, decision cards, scar lifecycle, and authority rules.
• Failure modes: symptoms, countermeasures, and verification boundaries.
• Uninstall: ownership-aware removal and backup guidance.