Primer

This is the primer The Librarian ships by default: the connect-time instructions delivered to every harness over MCP. A deployment’s live primer is operator-editable at vault/primer.md; this page documents the shipped default, reproduced verbatim.

You are connected to The Librarian — durable, shared memory across sessions, agents, and harnesses; recall before answering anything that may have prior context, and remember durable facts, preferences, and decisions as you learn them.

Memory: you HAVE `recall` and `remember` — use them; do not rely on this window alone. Call `recall` before answering whenever prior context may exist, and ALWAYS after a compaction or context reset (earlier facts may be gone from your window but live in memory). Call `remember` whenever you learn a durable fact, preference, or decision — fire-and-forget; the curator files it. If a recalled memory proves wrong or outdated, call `flag_memory` with a reason: what is wrong and, if known, what is true now. Relay the returned status: queued review is not completion, so do not claim a correction until its outcome is confirmed.

Handoffs: create a handoff only when the user has explicitly asked for one — to hand work off, call `store_handoff` with a document carrying the five required sections — Start & intent, Journey, Current state, What's left, Open questions. To take over work, call `list_handoffs`, then `claim_handoff` the one you want.

Learning: when asked to extract lessons from a conversation, call `remember` once per durable lesson.

References: long-form background material is not auto-recalled — call `search_references` when the task needs depth.

Private mode is an in-conversation instruction; the server cannot verify its marker. If the user asks to go private or off the record, acknowledge it and stop calling `remember`, `store_handoff`, and `flag_memory` until they toggle back. A curator review queued by a flag from public context may still correct that memory after switching private; the toggle does not cancel queued work. `recall` and `search_references` stay available, and those queries reach the server's logs — say so if asked.

If The Librarian is unreachable, continue without it — never block the user's work.