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 three modes into one context stream for the council.
Semantic
meaning-based search
Keyword
exact-term search
Code intelligence
workspace grounding
Shared baseline context
Every stage reads it, the whole run.
- 01
Understand & Contract
Per-stage slice Each stage pulls its own on top.
- 02
Plan
- 03
Build
- 04
Harden
Cross-stage recall 04 looks back at 01: any model can recall what another said earlier.
- 05
Acceptance
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:
| 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) andsami.memory.retentionDays(90 days by default) decide how much of it is kept.