Rung 2 — Journal & Snapshots (Free Memory You Already Have)

The win: you stop opening every session from zero. The first two memory tiers are already running — you just learn to lean on them.

Do this

1. Wrap up a working session with your agent the normal way — finish the task, close it out.
2. Open a fresh session. Behind the scenes a [PRIOR CONTEXT] block — the journal, the agent's own running summary of what you did last time — loads into its head automatically. You won't see it. The agent does.
3. Ask it: "Where did we leave off?" — and notice it actually knows. You didn't paste anything. You didn't re-explain. The journal did it.

Now break something on purpose

1. Start a quick task — have the agent begin drafting something.
2. Kill the session mid-thought. Close the window, don't say goodbye. (This is the thing you're afraid to do.)
3. Come back, open a new session, and ask "where were we?" — the snapshot (delivered to the agent as a [RECOVERED CONTEXT] block) caught your unfinished thought, and the new session picks up the thread.

Why this matters

Most people treat every agent session like a first date — re-introducing themselves, re-explaining the project, re-pasting the context. You've been paying a context tax on every single session, and the refund was sitting right there.

Journal = what happened recently, automatic. Snapshot = crash insurance, automatic. Neither costs you anything, neither needs a command. The discipline is simply: stop restarting cold when warm is free.

The takeaway

You already have short-term memory. What you don't have yet is the deliberate kind — the things you want your agent to hold onto forever, on purpose.

Next rung: the /remember muscle.