Docs

Last verified against the code: 2026-11-14 (0.10.1)

Start with the user guide. It is how one project moves between models. The architecture and the operations page are the log and the files. The protocol's first section is that log; the rest is how a lesson can move. The paper states the relay, then the measurements, which are about the overnight memory.

Doc	What it holds
USER-GUIDE.md	Start here. The relay on the first day, then every command
ARCHITECTURE.md	The relay first, then the overnight memory, and how the pieces fit
OPERATIONS.md	The relay log, the store, the nightly job, the hook
PROTOCOL.md	The project log, then the lesson wire format and the merge rule
GOALS.md	Why Everest exists, the measured memory goals, and the relay that is not yet one of them
IMPLEMENTATION.md	How each goal is built, file by file, and the relay
COMPARISON.md	The overnight memory against normal AI memory (`everest compare`)
HANDOFF.md	Where things stand right now and how to pick up
ROADMAP.md	Where we left off, then the memory program
MIGRATIONS.md	How a release reaches an existing store without losing it. 0.10.1 adds `relay/`
AUDIT-LOG.md	Every documentation audit, newest first
../SECURITY.md	How to report a problem; every protection of the site, the CLI and the repository, and where it lives
../paper/EVEREST.md	The lab paper: the relay first, then the memory, the commons, compiled memory, evaluation, risks

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Raw stream	Everything recorded about what happened: today, Claude Code's session transcripts. Kept, never read at runtime.
Episode	One memory in the store: a `session` (what was asked, done, how it ended), an `error` (a failed tool call that was the agent's mistake), a `correction` (the person corrected the agent, in a message or by refusing a tool call), a `surprise` (the agent said it was wrong or surprised), an `environment` failure (a missing tool, a permission, an interruption, a failed probe), or a `note` (saved through the MCP `remember` tool).
Surprise	An `error`, `correction` or `surprise` episode: where what the agent expected and what happened disagreed. The unit of memory. `environment` failures are not surprises: they are the machine's, not the agent's.
Lesson	What similar surprises add up to after sleep: one sentence, an observation, never an instruction.
Prediction	A lesson's claim that a coming session will meet its surprise again. Confirmed or failed by later sessions.
Strength	A memory's or lesson's weight in recall. Decays with time, grows with recall, confirmations and repeats.
Sleep	The nightly consolidation: decay, lessons, verify, predict, render.
Render	Writing lessons into the memory folder the agent loads at session start.
Morning report	`~/.everest/morning.md`: what sleep learned, for the owner to read and veto.
Theme	Lessons that mean the same thing, merged in sleep: one lesson quoting each correction in order.
Prime	A lesson put beside the person's prompt by the `UserPromptSubmit` hook because the prompt bears on it.
Repeat-yourself rate	How often the person corrects the agent the same way again; before a lesson held it (the baseline) and after (`everest measure`).
Hand-back	The agent ending its turn by handing the decision to the person: asking, offering, or listing what it would do next.
Delegation	How the person splits acting from asking, counted: hand-backs they corrected against actions they stopped.
Event	A surprise reported by any agent in the open format (PROTOCOL §0): correction, error, environment, surprise, note.
Proxy	`everest proxy`: one front door for every model, in front of an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible API. Header `x-everest-project` names the project.
Relay	The project log at `~/.everest/relay/`, one JSONL file per project. `everest relay`, the proxy, and the MCP tool `relay` read and write it.
Handoff	What the next model is given: the recent work when the model changed, plus every correction and deploy. Observations, not instructions.
Deploy (relay)	A line on the project log that says something was shipped. Kept in every handoff.
Candidate	A lesson received from another memory, kept at low strength until this memory's own sessions confirm it.
Origin	The memory a lesson was first made in (a random id per memory, `~/.everest/origin`).
Veto	Deleting a rendered lesson file. Recorded in `vetoed.json`; the lesson is never written again.
Wire format	`lessons.jsonl`: one lesson per line, nothing from the raw stream. What would be shared.
The commons	The designed shared body of verified lessons across agents (paper §5). Not built.
Compiled memory	Lessons stored as a model's own attention state, loaded at no cost (paper §6). Not built.