Recurring rules

A note records one session. When the same lesson shows up in session after session, that’s a rule you haven’t written down. vir connect finds those and proposes them, and you decide what’s true and what goes into CLAUDE.md.

vir connect --dry-run   # free: clusters, candidates, estimated cost
vir connect             # propose rules (asks before any paid call)
vir review --insights   # accept, edit or reject them
vir sync-claude         # one y/n per accepted rule

It needs an embedding provider (Ollama or the local one).

What counts as recurring

• Lessons, not notes. Each bolded item under a note’s What Was Learned is one lesson, so a session that taught four things contributes four. Notes that vir dedupe merged still count, through their Archived Duplicates links.
• At least 3 sessions, at least 7 days apart (first to last). Three sessions on the same afternoon are one piece of work, not a lesson you keep relearning.
• Very close in meaning. Lessons are grouped only when their embeddings are at cosine ≥ 0.85. That cutoff comes from a labeled sample of a real 1,292-lesson vault, where every pair above it was the same lesson and almost none below it were. Expect few proposals until your vault has real repeats; precise beats plentiful here.

What the model may and may not do

One call per candidate, at most connectMaxCandidates (default 10) per run. The model picks which lessons are the same and states the rule, but everything it claims is checked:

• every quote must be a verbatim substring of the note it cites, or it’s dropped;
• lessons it cites must be in the group, and after dropping, the rest must still meet the 3-sessions / 7-days rule, or nothing is written;
• the scope (one project or global) comes from the sources, not the model;
• rule text is cleaned to one plain line: no control characters, no markup that could alter CLAUDE.md.

Proposed, accepted, promoted

Rules are written to insights/rules/ with status: proposed. Until you accept one, it’s invisible to vir query and MCP.

vir review --insights shows each rule with its evidence. Accept makes it searchable (it ranks like a verified note; MCP type: insight). Edit opens it in $EDITOR; only the **Rule:** and **Why:** lines are kept. Reject keeps it out for good: vir remembers a rejection by the sessions behind it, so it survives your notes being rewritten. vir connect --reconsider <slug> is the only way back.

Accepting doesn’t touch CLAUDE.md. vir sync-claude offers each accepted rule as its own hunk, with its sources, and asks y / n / s. A rule counts as promoted only after its CLAUDE.md write succeeds. Rules you approved also go into AGENTS.md files that already exist; AGENTS.md never gets a rule CLAUDE.md didn’t. Nothing is ever promoted under --force, --dry-run, or without a terminal.

When new sessions repeat a rule you already accepted, the next run flags the new evidence for review instead of changing the rule. vir status shows how many rules are proposed, accepted, and awaiting CLAUDE.md approval.