memory-defrag · basicmachines-co — Claude Code skill: defragment agent memory files

What memory-defrag does

The skill walks your agent's memory files and tidies them. It starts with an inventory: MEMORY.md, the memory/ directory with daily notes and tasks, and memory/tasks/ underneath. For each file it notes line count, last modified date, and topic coverage.

Then it looks for the usual rot: a file past 300 lines covering half a dozen topics, the same fact sitting in three places, references to finished work, contradictions between files, nested directories like memory/memory/memory/. Each problem maps to an action — split, merge, prune, restructure. Before touching anything the skill writes a short plan, then applies changes one at a time and checks that nothing was lost.

Raw daily notes memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md stay untouched, because they are the audit trail. Tasks marked done older than 14 days can go. When relevance is unclear, the skill advises keeping the entry with a (review needed) tag instead of deleting it. A reasonable target is 15–25 topical files: fewer and files bloat, more and everything fragments. The catch: it works against your own memory layout, so on an unusual directory structure you will be editing the plan by hand.