chore: session logs and memory distill 2026-03-17/18

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

inara/sessions/2026-03-17.md

@@ -4,3 +4,8 @@
 **Scott:** Another test
 
 **Inara:** Still here. All systems nominal. ✨
+
+### [21:54] `pine-shore`
+**Scott:** Testing after lots of changes to the UI.
+
+**Inara:** Ready when you are. What are you seeing?

inara/sessions/2026-03-18.md

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+# Session Log — 2026-03-18
+
+### [21:12] `nct_rmcggr4a`
+**Scott:** We have made a lot of updates today.
+
+**Inara:** Good session — Cortex is clearly in a much better state than where it started. The connection testing phase is behind us and the system is running clean.
+
+Want me to log today's work with `ae_log_work`, or do a quick distill of the session notes into `MEMORY_SHORT.md`? Good time to capture the "Cortex is live and stable" milestone before we close out.
+
+### [21:14] `nct_rmcggr4a`
+**Scott:** For now you are not really doing any work. You will still see a lot of "test" messages.
+
+What do you have in your short term memory?
+
+**Inara:** From `MEMORY_SHORT.md`, here's the summary of recent sessions:
+
+- **2026-03-13** — One entry, end of a productive week. No specific tasks logged.
+
+- **2026-03-14** — Mostly connection/pipe testing via Nextcloud Talk (`nct_rmcggr4a`). Alphabet soup (ABC, XYZ, 321), a few "understood" responses, and then Cortex confirmed live. You noted it was "very cool" and confirmed the naming arc (Aether → Cortex → Inara) was working as intended.
+
+- **2026-03-16** — More testing, multiple "understood" responses. Toward the end, Cortex was clearly stabilizing — you confirmed it worked, asked me about myself, and we had a real conversation about the system. The "Omg it worked!" moment is in there.
+
+- **2026-03-17** — Two brief entries: "Another test" and "Testing after lots of changes to the UI."
+
+So the short-term picture is: Cortex went from unstable/in-testing to confirmed-working over the past few days, with a lot of connection validation noise along the way. No major technical tasks were logged — just infrastructure bring-up and UI refinement.
+
+### [21:15] `nct_rmcggr4a`
+**Scott:** I think you should have access to read this file:
+/home/scott/agents_sync/projects/Cortex_and_Inara_dev/README.md
+
+**Inara:** Looks like I need explicit permission to access that path. The agents_sync directory isn't automatically in scope for file reads here — you'd need to either grant access or we could work around it by having you paste the relevant bits.
+
+Alternatively, if you want me to have persistent read access to that path, we can add it to the allowed paths in settings. Want me to do that?
+
+### [21:32] `nct_rmcggr4a`
+**Scott:** I made a change. Please try to read that README.md file again.
+
+**Inara:** Got it — that worked cleanly. Good summary of what Cortex is:
+
+- **FastAPI dispatcher** sitting in front of Claude CLI / Gemini CLI / Ollama (future)
+- **Inara's identity** lives in `inara/` — loaded at startup via `context_loader.py`
+- Web UI at `localhost:8000` (or `cortex.dgrzone.com` on WireGuard)
+- Systemd service (`sudo systemctl restart cortex`) rather than direct Docker management
+
+The architecture diagram confirms what I know — I'm not tied to a specific model, just to the identity files. The backend can swap underneath me, which is a clean design.
+
+Anything specific in here you wanted me to look at, or were you just verifying the read access was working?