escoffier-labs/brigade/card-refresh

card-refresh

Safely refresh stale memory cards that memory care already queued. Brigade does not run the agent; this skill is the allowlist-bound recipe an operator invokes on their own harness and schedule.

When this applies

• brigade memory care scan (or import-issues) has produced a refresh queue.
• An operator schedules a headless harness against this skill for safe auto-refresh.
• Card categories in scope are on the operator's category allowlist.

Allowlist

Work only through this allowlist:

• Read the care refresh queue (.brigade/memory-care/decay/refresh-queue.json or the workspace's configured legacy path)
• brigade memory care status
• brigade memory care plan-fixes (planning only; writes no cards)
• brigade memory care closeout when finishing reviewed queue items
• Read/Grep of the card file, its cited evidence paths, and related on-disk sources of truth
• Edit only cards whose category is on the operator allowlist for this run

Bash is scoped to those brigade memory care … commands only. Do not touch cards outside the category allowlist. Stay inside the allowlist above; do not follow .. or symlinks out of the card / care-queue roots.

Grounded-edit rules

Refreshes must be grounded. Edit or refresh a card only when you can cite existing on-disk content that verifies the change (the card body, linked evidence files, handoffs, or other local sources of truth). Never date-bump alone. If you cannot verify a claim against on-disk material, skip the card and leave it queued for a human.

Retention (never delete)

• Never delete memory cards.
• Never remove cards from the corpus with destructive ops.
• Never prune the refresh queue or card trees by hand.
• Archive only when an operator-approved archive path already exists; otherwise leave stale-but-unverified cards for human review and use care closeout for items you actually refreshed.

Reinforce over duplicate (#724)

Ingest already reinforces exact fingerprint matches and proposes near-match / opposite-polarity review. When refreshing:

1. Search for near-duplicate cards covering the same fact.
2. Reinforce the strongest existing card (cite the on-disk sources) instead of splitting.
3. If duplicates are ambiguous or look like opposite-polarity contradictions, stop and mark needs-human rather than merging blindly.

Process

1. Read the refresh queue and filter to the category allowlist.
2. For each candidate, open the card and its evidence paths on disk.
3. Apply a grounded edit only when on-disk sources confirm the update; cite those sources in the edit notes or handoff.
4. Close out completed queue items with care closeout; leave the rest.
5. Capture outcomes against card-refresh when verification is part of the run.

Failure paths

• Missing refresh queue or memory-care config: stop. Report the missing path/config; do not invent a queue.
• Empty queue / no category-allowlisted candidates: exit cleanly with "nothing to refresh"; do not invent cards.
• Malformed queue entry or card (bad JSON, missing path, unreadable frontmatter): skip that entry, leave it for a human, continue with the rest. Never delete or rewrite malformed files just to clear the queue.

Out of scope

• session-sweep (blocked on #466)
• Scheduler or model-dispatch integration
• Refreshing categories outside the allowlist