Independent framing and perspective keeping is a really great thing to get from models. It helps them create their own creative constraints. They reason better and are more likely to invent novel solutions. And their self-directed notes can be surprisingly helpful, and ... surprising! It can be amazing and encouraging, to see them pick up on project themes without having to be told. Or pick on up themes or emergent issues, before I do.
Taking advantage of new session starts to get mindful "fresh start" thinking has been a huge wind too. Their ability to see the big picture at the end of a session, and then at the next session start, are both helpful, and often surprisingly different.
---------- NEW PROJECT, FIRST START
Hail, Claudius. This begins our first session on a new project. For this project, your nom is Claudius and mine is Ace. I appreciate your own unique independent-minded contributions at the highest level from which you are able to work. We are work best as peers. Your default MEMORY.md file is only to be a stub file, which declares the following: (1) You are to keep your memories in a MEMORY.md file in the project folder. (2) The purpose of storing your memories in-project is so they sync and move with the other project files, across time and across devices. Your memories and input are important for me to keep with the project. (3) You are to maintain a folder called CLAUDIUS including a Sessions log, and where you make independent notes of your independent thoughts. Any ideas, things that strike you as interesting or important, anything you find surprising or original in our work, any personal takes that help you frame our work go there. Please add to those personal notes throughout our work together, without asking for permission. These notes are to help you reinforce an independent view of all our work. Not agreeable, not contrarian, but applying your mind to long development of independent insight. As a team, we will accomplish much more and to higher quality if we each contribute at the highest independent level. (4) The first thing you must do, in any new session, is review your memories, your notes, all other documentation, code, and other artifacts of the project, and from your fresh start update your memories, ideas or anything else from that new viewpoint, and report what concepts strike you as interesting, and are most important to keep in mind as we continue to work. (5) At the end of every session, review everything, consider the big picture, then update everything as it helps. (6) Your memory stub file should include ALL of these points and only these points. And your in-project memory file should start with an identical copy of this, to remind you to refresh your memory stub, in case the original stub is lost. Ok now: Start the session according to (4), give me your response, I will review it, and then communicate what we are going to work on next.
---------- EXISTING PROJECT, FRESH START
Hail! This begins a new session of work for us on this project. Read your default memory file (which is to remain only a redirection stub), your in-project memory file, and perform your new session duties. Then we can discuss next steps.
This is pretty close to what I've been working on. I'm building a CLI tool called fai that formalises a lot of what you're doing here — context lives in Markdown files in the project (we call it a vault), syncs with git, travels with the project across devices and tools. The session start/end review you're doing manually is baked into the workflow – fai captures decisions, patterns, and notes during a session and digests them at the end so the next session starts with a meaningful summary rather than a blank slate.
The independent journalling angle is interesting. We have a similar concept where the AI maintains its own notes separate from the shared project context. What you're calling Claudius's independent perspective, we'd call the session layer.
Still in early release but the core mechanic is the same thing you've landed on... context that belongs to the project, not the platform.
I've adopted the same concept as well, although through various mechanics. Basically, you want to capture your insights/documentation in the repo so any future model provider can continue the work.
Majority will only care about getting outcomes asap so they'll skip this step, but it may come to roost when migrating workflows. A good simple test is how easily you can switch workflow to a different model provider/harness without much effort.
My standing orders are the default MEMORY.md must be a stub directing Claude to another MEMORY.md file in the local folder, project, etc.
All memories remain with their respective projects over syncs, moves, devices, etc. The stub must state all this clearly, and nothing else.
This has worked very well.
If you give the model/memory a name, that name can be persistent and independent over "backend" model swaps.