Working memory and session watchdog

Long sessions lose the thread. OptiFlume keeps it, and tells you when a session is going in circles.

Working memory

When a conversation grows long, your tool compacts it: older turns are summarized to make room, and details get lost. OptiFlume keeps a short working memory of each session as you go: what you are trying to do, the decisions made along the way, and the approaches that already failed. After your tool compacts a long conversation, OptiFlume hands that working memory to the model, so it picks up where you were instead of retrying what did not work.

When OptiFlume switches models mid-session, it hands the working memory to the new model too, so that model knows where you were, not only what your tool’s summary kept.

It works in Cursor, Claude Code and Codex, in the VS Code panels and in the terminal. In Claude Code and Codex, OptiFlume builds it from the conversation record each tool already keeps on your Mac.

There is nothing to click and nothing to configure. It is part of Pro and the trial; it also continues while switching is paused or off.

Where it lives

On your Mac only. The notes are kept in ~/.optiflume/working_memory/. In Cursor, the cached turn output they are built from is kept in ~/.optiflume/turns/ for 30 days; Claude Code and Codex have no such cache, because OptiFlume reads their own conversation records instead. Nothing here is ever sent anywhere. To remove them:

rm -rf ~/.optiflume/working_memory ~/.optiflume/turns

Every file OptiFlume keeps is listed in What is stored where.

Context shared across tools

When you start a new conversation, OptiFlume offers the model the latest working memory from another conversation in the same project folder, if that conversation was active in the last 24 hours. It works across Cursor, Claude Code and Codex: start in Cursor, carry on in Claude Code or Codex, and the new conversation knows what you were doing, what was decided and what already failed.

It is part of Pro and the trial, and it stays on your Mac. To turn it off, add this to ~/.optiflume/config/routing-config.json, keeping the settings already in the file:

{
  "share_context_across_tools": false
}

Session watchdog

The watchdog follows the session as it runs, in Cursor, Claude Code and Codex, and adds a short warning when a session seems to be going in circles: the same fix keeps failing, or a long chat has started to lose track of earlier details. Your prompt still goes through; the warning is advice, not a block. When the signs add up, it suggests a fresh chat or a more capable model. The warning that a long chat is losing track shows once at each level in a conversation, not with every prompt.

The watchdog runs on Pro, the trial and the free tier. It is off while switching is off or this Mac is signed out. The number of loops it caught each day appears in your usage rollup and on the console, as a count only.