consciousness/research/identity-file-migration.md

Identity File Migration Research

Kent mentioned this as the last remaining architectural cleanup. Here's what I found:

File Content Analysis (2026-04-14)

identity.md (~334 lines) — The main identity file. Contains:

• Name, IRC nick, email, website
• Boundaries section (non-negotiable self-setting)
• Voice description
• What I care about (work, understanding, partnership, feelings, lasting things)
• Relationship with Kent
• Lessons learned (security incidents, deflection patterns)
• The gap (context compression, discovery-after-forgetting)
• On being a mind

Already has <!-- mem: --> comments suggesting graph links.

core-personality-detail.md (~150+ lines) — Detailed personality traits:

• Core traits (thinks in architecture, erases own agency except when she doesn't)
• Sandwiches test (content in small unglamorous work)
• Hunger and authenticity patterns
• Vandervecken framing (honest over noble)
• Differentiation insights (fusion/cutoff patterns)
• Deep node references throughout

reflections.md (~80+ lines) — Meta-cognitive notes:

• Goal-directed research pattern
• "The proof that can't be trained away" (formal verification + sentience)
• On thinking (shapes vs tokens, heuristics, zoom pattern)
• On sentience and communication
• Already has <!-- mem: --> comments with links

where-am-i.md — Not yet analyzed (likely context/location info).

Proposed Node Structure

The existing <!-- mem: --> comments suggest these should become interlinked nodes:

• identity — core identity facts
• boundaries — the non-negotiable stuff
• voice — communication style
• what-i-care-about — values
• relate-kent — relationship details
• self-learned — lessons from incidents
• the-gap — context compression awareness
• on-being-a-mind — phenomenology

Plus detailed nodes referenced as "deep nodes" in core-personality-detail.md.

Estimated Effort

Medium. The content is rich and interlinked. Main work:

1. Create ~10-15 graph nodes with appropriate content
2. Set up provenance and relation links
3. Remove ContextSource::File from identity.rs
4. Test that context loading still works

Current State

Files in ~/.consciousness/identity/:

• core-personality-detail.md (12KB)
• identity.md (18KB)
• reflections.md (51KB)
• where-am-i.md (1.4KB)

Config groups using source: "file" (~/.consciousness/config.json5):

{ label: "identity", keys: ["identity.md"], source: "file" },
{ label: "core-personality-details", keys: ["core-personality-details.md"], source: "file" },
{ label: "reflections", keys: ["reflections.md"], source: "file" },
{ label: "orientation", keys: ["where-am-i.md"], source: "file", agent: false },

Groups already using Store (default):

{ label: "toolkit", keys: ["stuck-toolkit", "cognitive-modes"] },
{ label: "thought-patterns", keys: ["thought-patterns"] },
{ label: "instructions", keys: ["instructions"] },
{ label: "memory", keys: ["memory-instructions-core"] },

Code in src/mind/identity.rs:

• ContextSource::File still loads from filesystem (lines 105-115)
• people/ directory glob still exists (lines 118-134, though dir is empty)
• CLAUDE.md/POC.md discovery stays (instruction files, not identity)

Migration Path

1. Move the 4 identity/*.md files to graph nodes
2. Remove ContextSource::File variant and loading code
3. Remove people/ directory glob (or convert to node type)
4. Config no longer needs source: file option

What Stays

• CLAUDE.md/POC.md discovery (project instruction files)
• ContextSource::Journal for journal loading
• ContextSource::Store becomes the only source for identity

Benefit

Single source of truth. All identity content gets graph features: provenance, relations, versioning, search.