fact.
durable truth about the repo, environment, architecture, or workflow. can be repo-scoped or global. the active truth is always the latest fact in a revision chain—the one with no outgoing update.
semantic memory
truth that never silently mutates.
semantic memory stores durable knowledge: facts about the world, preferences about how work should be done, and changes that invalidated prior truth. nothing is overwritten. everything is linked.
three kinds.
preference.
a durable convention or way of working. style decisions, naming patterns, what should win when there is ambiguity. learned from working with you.
change.
something that invalidated prior truth. a change never exists alone. it sits between the old fact and the new fact in an immutable chain.
the revision chain.
no silent overwrite.
when a fact changes, shellbrain writes the new fact, records the change that caused it, and links all three: old fact → change → new fact. the chain is immutable.
full audit trail.
you can trace any current belief back through every revision that shaped it. old facts are not deleted. they are superseded.
scope matters.
repo-scoped facts are visible only within their repo. global facts are visible everywhere. prefer repo scope unless the truth genuinely belongs to the machine or user.
knowledge with history.
most systems overwrite truth in place and lose the record of what changed and why. shellbrain preserves the full lineage. every current belief has a provenance.