# Journal — 2026-05-31

## demarkus-memory plugin v0.3.0 — self-documenting sessions + LOOKUP recall (#168, merged)

Shipped a plugin update that started as a security-pin bump and grew into a real feature. Merged to main as squash commit `c54927e`.

### What landed
- **Security pins bumped** to the fix-containing releases from yesterday's dep bump: `SERVER 0.17.10→0.17.13`, `CLIENT 0.12.36→0.12.38`, `TOOLS 0.1.16→0.1.28`. The existing version-sentinel drift logic in `ensure_binaries` propagates these to existing installs on next session start. Plugin version `0.2.0→0.3.0`; reconciled the stale `marketplace.json` (was wrongly `0.1.1`).
- **Always-on self-documentation.** New `context/session-guidance.md` is injected every session via a `SessionStart` `hookSpecificOutput.additionalContext` payload. `session-start.sh` now folds all setup output to stderr (`{ … } 1>&2`) so stdout carries only the JSON, and emits it last. Two new `lib.sh` helpers: `json_escape` (portable awk JSON-string encoder, no jq) and `server_health_warning`.
- **Server-down warning.** When the configured memory server isn't reachable, the injected context leads with a ⚠️ so the agent surfaces it instead of silently failing memory calls. Health signal is PID-liveness (managed modes) / adopted-process scan (reuse) — deliberately NOT the port probe, which degrades to permissive without lsof/ss and would false-warn.
- **LOOKUP integration.** `mark_lookup` is now the first recall step in the skill ("what do I know about X") with the catalog-not-full-text caveat. Agent-owned tagging + importance is now instructed across all three write paths — free-form publishes (skill), proactive self-documentation (session guidance), and `/soul-journal` (creation-time `tags`/`importance`, with a re-publish note since `mark_append` carries no metadata). `knowledge-join.md` corrected 13- → 14-tool surface.

### Review + fixes
- CodeRabbit flagged one real issue: `server_health_warning` passed raw `.pid` contents to `kill -0`, which misreads empty/option-like (`-1`)/garbage content as alive. Fixed with a `^[0-9]+$` guard before probing; tested across no-file / empty / option-like / garbage / dead-pid / live-pid.
- The "docstring coverage 50% < 80%" pre-merge warning was a soft check, skipped with reason (the bash helpers already carry header comments; not contorting code for a metric).

### .gitignore bug caught in passing
Fritz noticed `tools/demarkus-token` showed as ignored. Root cause: the unanchored stray-binary entry `tools/demarkus-token` matched the **source package directory** (tools layout puts main packages at `tools/<name>/`, unlike client/server which use `cmd/`), silently ignoring any new untracked file in the package. `main.go` survived only because it predated the rule. First instinct was to delete the line, but Fritz pushed back ("it should build on change no?") — empirically confirmed `cd tools/demarkus-token && go build` does drop a `tools/demarkus-token/demarkus-token` binary, so the protection was real. Correct fix: anchor to the binary path. Extended to `demarkus-publish` and `demarkus-broker`, which had the same latent footgun and were never covered.

### Lesson
"Delete the redundant ignore" was wrong — the artifact it guarded against does get built (just via a different invocation than I first reasoned about). Test the actual build behavior before declaring an ignore rule pointless. Anchoring beats deleting when a stray-binary name collides with a source directory.

### Note
This entry couldn't be tag/importance-stamped: the demarkus-soul MCP `mark_publish` gateway here predates the `metadata` param that #168 (and the earlier LOOKUP work) added to the local `demarkus-mcp`. So the very recall improvement shipped today isn't yet available on this soul's gateway — worth a follow-up to bump the soul server/client to a build that exposes publisher metadata over MCP.