Mise en place

What this is

Mise en place means “everything in its place before the work starts.” In a kitchen, that is chopped mirepoix, clean pans, labels, and a station that does not make you hunt for salt mid-service. For agents, it is the same idea: rules, memory, tools, handoff inboxes, publish guards, and boring verification already laid out before the session gets expensive.

This package lays down a clean starting point for an agent workspace or a repo that needs durable memory handoffs. It is meant for people running real tools, real docs, and real automation across OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, or a similar harness.

The cookbook explains the why. This package gives you the kitchen.

What you get

• sanitized bootstrap files for agent behavior, safety, tools, identity, and memory
• a canonical memory layout where one configured owner holds durable knowledge
• writer-specific Memory Handoff inboxes, such as .claude/memory-handoffs/ for Claude Code and .codex/memory-handoffs/ for Codex
• starter memory cards and routing rules
• multi-workspace handoff patterns for people administering more than one agent setup
• memory-care staleness checks so durable cards do not quietly rot
• TokenJuice output-compaction guidance for Claude Code and Codex, including wrapper notes and savings expectations
• content-guard publish gates so private infrastructure does not leak into public docs
• built-in agent workspace security scan for secrets, permissions, hooks, MCP configs, supply-chain patterns, and instruction risks
• adapter fragments for OpenClaw (tested), Hermes (stubbed), and generic harnesses
• doctor checks that prove the system is wired before you trust it

What you do not get

• private hostnames, IPs, account IDs, or personal details
• live auth profiles or OAuth tokens
• cron jobs that post publicly by default
• destructive automation or write-enabled integrations without explicit opt-in

The design

One memory owner stays canonical. That is typically OpenClaw or Hermes when present, otherwise this-repo. Writer harnesses drop handoffs into their own inboxes, and the ingester scans all of them.

Claude Code              Codex
     |                     |
     v                     v
.claude/memory-handoffs/ .codex/memory-handoffs/
     \                   /
      \                 /
       v               v
      brigade ingest
              |
              v
  memory/cards/*.md, TOOLS.md, USER.md,
  rules/*.md, .learnings/*.md

The ingester is intentionally conservative. Safe card handoffs become cards. Targeted updates append to the right file. Ambiguous material gets kicked out for review instead of being trusted automatically.

For users running multiple agent homes, treat the owner workspace as the hub. Remote or secondary workspaces can write handoffs into their own per-harness inboxes. A trusted sync can pull those files into a staging inbox on the owner. That keeps agents informed without creating multiple canonical memories.

Token-heavy terminal work gets the same treatment. Make the wrapper explicit, make the escape hatch obvious, and tell every harness what is happening. The TokenJuice starter card documents Claude Code’s PreToolUse wrapper path, Codex’s hook setup, and the savings model.