Memory Troubleshoot Skill

Diagnose and resolve common agent-memory issues safely. This skill never runs verification commands automatically and always asks for confirmation before edits or restarts.

When to Use

• Daemon will not start
• Commands are not found
• Connection refused
• No events captured
• Summarization failures

Safety Rules

• Do not edit files or restart services without confirmation
• Provide verification commands only
• Keep fixes scoped to the reported issue

Diagnostic Flow

Step 1: Identify the symptom

Which issue are you seeing?

1. "command not found" for memory-daemon or memory-ingest
2. "connection refused" or cannot query daemon
3. Daemon starts then stops
4. No events captured
5. Summarization not working
6. Other / not sure

Enter selection [1-6]:

Step 2: Provide targeted diagnostics (commands only)

1) Command not found

which memory-daemon
which memory-ingest
echo $PATH

2) Connection refused

memory-daemon status
lsof -i :50051
memory-daemon query --endpoint http://[::1]:50051 root

3) Daemon stops immediately

memory-daemon status
tail -50 ~/Library/Logs/memory-daemon/daemon.log
tail -50 ~/.local/state/memory-daemon/daemon.log

4) No events captured

grep -n "memory-ingest" ~/.claude/hooks.yaml
which memory-ingest
memory-daemon status

5) Summarization failing

echo "OPENAI: ${OPENAI_API_KEY:+set}"
echo "ANTHROPIC: ${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY:+set}"

Step 3: Offer safe fixes (with confirmation)

For each fix, ask:

I can apply the following fix:
  [describe the change]

Proceed? (yes/no)

Examples:

PATH update

Add ~/.local/bin to PATH in your shell profile

Restart daemon

Stop and restart the daemon:
  memory-daemon stop
  memory-daemon start

Fix hooks file

Add memory-ingest handler to ~/.claude/hooks.yaml

Step 4: Provide verification commands (optional)

memory-daemon status
memory-daemon query --endpoint http://[::1]:50051 root

Common Fix Playbooks

"command not found"

• Ensure binaries are installed
• Add install directory to PATH
• If missing, re-run memory-install

"connection refused"

• Confirm daemon is running
• Check port conflicts on 50051
• Update grpc_port in config if needed

"no events captured"

• Confirm hooks file contains memory-ingest
• Confirm memory-ingest is on PATH
• Restart the agent session after hook changes

"summarization not working"

• Set provider API key
• Ensure config provider matches key

Escalation

If diagnostics do not resolve the issue, recommend:

• Re-run memory-verify for a full check
• Re-run memory-install with a fresh setup