Self-Improvement Skill

Goal

Enable any agent to continuously learn from its own coding sessions, build permanent knowledge, and share learnings across a network of brains.

When to Use

• •At the start of each session: Load memory and apply past learnings
• •At the end of significant sessions: Trigger analysis to extract insights
• •Periodically: Run analysis on recent sessions to catch anything missed
• •When deploying new brains: Propagate accumulated knowledge to new instances

Prerequisites

• •agentbootup installed in the project (npx agentbootup)
• •MECH_APP_ID and MECH_API_KEY environment variables set
• •memory/ directory exists in project root

Workflow

Phase 1: Analyze Sessions

Run transcript analysis to extract insights from recent coding sessions.

# Analyze last 24 hours
analyze-transcripts

# Analyze all unprocessed sessions
analyze-transcripts --all

# Preview what would be analyzed
analyze-transcripts --dry-run --verbose

What happens:

1. •Finds Claude Code session transcripts for this project
2. •Filters to recent/unprocessed sessions
3. •Parses each transcript (messages, files modified, errors)
4. •Sends session context to LLM for insight extraction
5. •Writes insights to memory/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md
6. •Updates memory/MEMORY.md with significant learnings (deduplicated)

Phase 2: Review and Curate

After analysis, review what was extracted:

# Check today's daily log
cat memory/daily/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md

# Check what was added to long-term memory
git diff memory/MEMORY.md

# View analysis statistics
analyze-transcripts --stats

Curation actions:

• •Promote: Move auto-extracted insights to hand-written sections in MEMORY.md
• •Refine: Edit auto-extracted text for clarity and precision
• •Remove: Delete insights that are incorrect or not useful
• •Extract skill: If a learning is a reusable capability, create a skill

Phase 3: Apply in Next Session

At session start, memory is automatically loaded via CLAUDE.md. The agent should:

1. •Check memory/MEMORY.md for relevant patterns and anti-patterns
2. •Check recent daily logs for context on current work
3. •Apply "never do X" rules to avoid past mistakes
4. •Use learned patterns to make better decisions

Phase 4: Share Across Brains

For multi-brain setups:

1. •Memory sync daemon pushes/pulls memory changes via Mech Storage
2. •agentbootup templates carry curated knowledge to new projects
3. •Skills are shared when synced to Mech Storage

Commands

Memory Architecture

memory/
├── MEMORY.md              ← Long-term (loaded every session, <200 lines)
├── README.md              ← System documentation
└── daily/
    ├── 2026-02-05.md      ← Today's session logs
    ├── 2026-02-04.md      ← Yesterday's logs
    └── ...

MEMORY.md Structure

# Autonomous Memory System

## Core Identity
(Agent name, role, purpose)

## Critical Learnings
### Auto-extracted (2026-02-05)
- Learning from transcript analysis
- Another learning

### Hand-written
- Curated permanent knowledge

## Skills Acquired (N)
- List of capabilities

## Standing Orders
- Always-active behavioral rules

Daily Log Structure

# Daily Log: 2026-02-05

## Session abc12345 (14:30)
**Summary:** Built fuzzy search for transcript queries
**Duration:** 2h 15m
**Activity:** 45 messages, 8 files modified

### Technical Learnings
- Levenshtein distance catches typos within threshold of 2

### Mistakes & Corrections
- **Mistake:** Wrong stemming suffix order
  - **Correction:** Apply longer suffixes first
  - **Lesson:** Order matters in sequential string operations

Significance Criteria

Not all learnings make it to MEMORY.md. To qualify, a learning must:

1. •Contain a signal keyword: never, always, critical, important, security, must, bug, fix, pattern, breaking, gotcha, workaround
2. •OR be substantial: More than 50 characters of specific, actionable insight

Learnings that are too generic ("learned about APIs") or too short are kept in daily logs only.

Deploying to Company Brains

Step 1: Curate Your Knowledge

Review your brain's memory/MEMORY.md and identify universally valuable learnings.

Step 2: Promote to Templates

Add curated knowledge to agentbootup templates:

• •templates/memory/MEMORY.md - Default memory template
• •templates/.ai/protocols/SELF_IMPROVEMENT.md - This protocol
• •templates/.claude/skills/self-improvement/ - This skill

Step 3: Publish

cd ~/dev_env/agentbootup
# Bump version in package.json
npm publish

Step 4: Deploy to Each Brain

cd ~/dev_env/project-brain
npx agentbootup

Step 5: Enable Continuous Learning

Each brain needs:

1. •MECH_APP_ID and MECH_API_KEY in environment
2. •analyze-transcripts run periodically (cron or daemon)
3. •memory-sync-daemon for cross-session persistence

Error Handling

References

• •templates/.ai/protocols/SELF_IMPROVEMENT.md - Full protocol documentation
• •lib/analysis/README.md - Technical architecture
• •templates/.ai/protocols/AUTONOMOUS_OPERATION.md - Autonomous behavior rules
• •templates/.ai/skills/memory-manager/SKILL.md - Memory management skill