Dream Cycle

The dream cycle is Cerebrumma's self-improvement loop. It compresses raw episodic memory into lasting knowledge — distilling what happened into facts, rules, and equity notes that live in the deeper memory layers.

How it works #

1. Generate — Cerebrumma reads your episodic memory and builds a structured reflection prompt.
2. Reflect — You paste the prompt into any LLM (Claude, Grok, GPT-4, etc.) and save the response as a Markdown file.
3. Ingest — Cerebrumma parses the LLM response and promotes insights into the right memory layers.

Step 1: Generate the reflection prompt #

This archives your current episodic entries and writes a reflection prompt to stdout. The prompt is structured to elicit useful insights from any capable LLM.

Step 2: Run the reflection #

Paste the prompt output into Claude, Grok, GPT-4, or any LLM. Ask it to respond in the format below. Save the response as a Markdown file — for example, reflection.md.

Step 3: Ingest the reflection #

Cerebrumma parses the response and routes each section to the correct memory layer.

Expected response format #

The LLM response should use ## Section headers with - bullet items. Cerebrumma parses four sections:

## Key Insights
- Functional components outperform class components in this codebase
- TypeScript strict mode catches ~40% of bugs before runtime

## New Rules
- Always run cerebrum status before starting a new session
- Use cerebrum add --global for cross-project conventions

## Equity & Bias Notes
- Avoid "blacklist/whitelist" terminology — use "allowlist/denylist"

## Prune Suggestions
- Entry from 2026-04-01 about webpack config is outdated (migrated to Vite)

Safety #

Prune suggestions are never acted on automatically. Cerebrumma prints them for you to review and delete manually. Your Brain only shrinks when you decide it should.

When to run it #

There's no hard rule — weekly is a good cadence for active projects. Run it whenever you feel like your episodic memory has grown noisy and you want to distill the signal.