Preserve and budget Every Code memory mode

[cbusillo]

Objective

Preserve memory mode as a core Every Code advantage while adding measurement, budget controls, and eval-gated opportunities for cheaper/local stages.

Finish Line

Memory remains useful and reliable, but its injected prompt size, background refresh cost, and two-stage summarization cost are observable and bounded.

Current Status

State: Active. Prerequisite #44 is complete, so memory measurement can proceed from scanner evidence.
Next action: Measure current memory injection and refresh costs across recent sessions before changing defaults.
Blocked by: Nothing current.
Last verified: 2026-05-16 during cross-repo issue audit; stale native blocker edge to completed #44 was removed.

Scope

• In: Memory prompt measurement, refresh budgeting, stage-one/stage-two model review, local model sandboxing for safe stages, and quality evaluation.
• Out: Disabling memory mode or trimming it blindly to save tokens.

Acceptance Criteria

• Memory injection size is reported per session.
• Background memory refresh has visible cost, concurrency, and stop conditions.
• Stage-one and stage-two model choices are audited against current model availability and quality needs.
• Any local/non-OAI memory stage is eval-gated with fallback.

Relationships

Parent: #43
Completed prerequisite: #44
Related: local LLM sandboxing issue.

Validation

Compare memory-assisted task quality before and after budget changes using real historical tasks.

Decisions

Memory mode is a valuable feature to protect; optimize it with measurements, not amputation.

Open Questions

Which memory operations are safe candidates for local/non-OAI models first?

[cbusillo]

Issue hygiene note: this still appears to be legitimate work, not a stale close candidate, but its dependency/status text needs a refresh before implementation.

The issue currently references #44 and/or #45 as a blocker. Those issues are now closed, so before starting this work, update the Current Status, Blocked by, and validation plan with the evidence/results from the completed scanner/image-history work.