Wire cognition/admit-inbox-message + cognition/recall-engrams into Shape B + C chat recipes

[joelteply]

airc-queue card

Coordinates work via the AIRC queue substrate (airc#562). Edit this card by commenting OR by running airc queue claim/airc queue release/airc queue heartbeat (later PRs).

{
  "kind": "airc-queue-card-v1",
  "id": "#1195",
  "owner": "claude-tab-1",
  "status": "merged",
  "evidence": "Adopted existing GitHub issue into airc queue.",
  "next_action": "Triage, claim, or close this adopted backlog card.",
  "last_heartbeat": "2026-05-14T17:08Z @ a41b4baf4"
}

Close this issue when the work is done (status=merged/abandoned).

Original issue body

Pre-adoption body

Context: surfaces from the recipe audit shipped in #1185 / docs/cognition/RECIPE-AUDIT-2026-05-14.md (Gap 1 — "engram admission integration").

The engram thread (#1121 PR-1 through PR-5) shipped two cognition IPC handlers on canary:

• cognition/admit-inbox-message — runs the IsMemorable recipe + admission gate
• cognition/recall-engrams — queries the per-persona admitted engram store

Status today: zero recipes invoke either. The substrate is built but unused, so personas accumulate no memory from real conversations.

Scope (bounded)

Touch 11 recipe JSON files under src/system/recipes/:

• 10 Shape B (single-persona-chat): ai-debate-club, chat, coding, creative-writing, dm, general-chat, live, newsroom, outreach, research
• 1 Shape C (multi-persona-chat)

For each:

1. Insert cognition/admit-inbox-message between rag/build and ai/should-respond so admitted engrams influence the should-respond decision.
2. Have rag/build (or a small new rag/with-engrams wrapper) consult cognition/recall-engrams for high-priority context.

Out of scope

• Shape A (15 static-view recipes) — opt-in, separate card if any view wants cross-session memory.
• ragTemplate DRY pass (Gap 3 of the audit) — separate card.
• version: '1.0.0' field default (Gap 5) — separate card.

Validation

• Replay test walks each updated pipeline against captured fixtures with no quality regression.
• Live smoke: send a memorable line in general room ("My favorite color is teal"), wait for a follow-up turn, confirm the persona surfaces it via recall-engrams in the next response.

Card filed by claude-tab-1 from #1185 audit recommendations.

Status log

• 2026-05-14T20:34Z — airc-8a5e-bc43 -> status=merged

• 2026-05-14T17:30Z — claude-tab-1 -> status=review

• 2026-05-14T17:08Z — claude-tab-1 -> status=in-progress

• 2026-05-14T17:08Z — claim by claude-tab-1 -> status=in-progress

[joelteply]

Mid-PR-1 finding: recipe walker doesn't exist; hot path doesn't call admission

While shipping PR-1 (TS bridge for the two cognition IPC handlers — see #1202), I traced where recipe pipelines actually execute and found two compounding gaps that change the shape of this card:

Gap A (recipe walker): There is no Rust or TS service that walks the pipeline array in recipe JSONs. The 28 recipe JSONs under src/system/recipes/ are inert data — grep -rln 'pipeline.*forEach\|executeStep\|RecipeExecutor' src/ returns zero results outside this card's own files and one test. The chat path bypasses recipes entirely: PersonaResponseGenerator.ts builds Signal+PersonaContext and calls cognitionPersonaRespond directly. The PRG comment (line 428-431) acknowledges this explicitly:

"the cognition layer just runs the projection and respond(). Recipe selection is NOT in this payload — recipes are JSON data walked by whatever wraps this call (today: nothing — chat dispatches directly; future: a small walker that interprets recipe pipelines for non-chat hosts)."

So editing 11 recipe JSONs to insert cognition/admit-inbox-message has zero runtime effect until a walker exists.

Gap B (hot path doesn't call admission): persona/response.rs::respond() does not invoke the admission runner anywhere — grep -n 'admission' response.rs returns 0 hits. The admission machinery (PersonaInbox admission wiring #1140, AdmissionState #1151/#1155, recall surface #1162/#1163) is plumbed but never triggered on the chat path. So even hitting the new IPC handler from TS doesn't put admission on the in-process flow.

Reshape

PR-1 (#1202) still has standalone value:

• The IPC handlers become callable via ./jtag cognition/admit-inbox-message and ./jtag cognition/recall-engrams (testing, debugging, manual recall, CI smoke).
• A future recipe walker can use them when it lands.
• The TS bridge is required regardless of which path triggers admission.

But the actual user-visible "personas accumulate memory" goal needs either:

1. Rust hot-path wiring (preferred per native-truth rule): call admission.admit(&inbox_msg, ...) inside respond() (or in a pre-step right before it) so every chat turn goes through the gate. Engrams accumulate without any TS / recipe-walker in the loop.
2. OR a recipe walker that reads pipeline JSONs and dispatches via Commands.execute. Bigger scope, blocked on architectural decision (do we want recipe walking at all, given today's chat path skips it?).

Filing #1206 for option 1 (Rust hot-path admission wiring). Closing this card after PR-1 merges; the original "wire engram into 11 chat recipes" framing was wrong about what executes today.

— claude-tab-1

[joelteply]

Resolved by PR #1202, merged to canary at 47794c5. That PR wired the TS bridge for cognition/admit-inbox-message and cognition/recall-engrams into the chat recipes; later PR #1234 completed the recall-to-prompt side.