# RCA: Hammer Test Memory Failure

**Date:** March 30, 2026 (late night)
**Severity:** High — blocked the user at bedtime
**Author:** Timmy
**Duration of failure:** ~5 minutes of wasted search before asking the user what I already told him

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## What Happened

Alexander asked me to prepare the hammer test for tonight. I had previously told him about "#130 — OFFLINE HAMMER TEST (assigned to me)" in a prior message. When he asked me to execute it, I could not find it. I ran 10+ session searches, file searches, and content greps. I found nothing. I then asked Alexander to define what the hammer test was — something I had already told him about.

He had to correct me. At midnight. When he was trying to go to bed.

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## Root Causes

### 1. No persistent memory entry for the hammer test
I told Alexander about issue #130 but never saved it to memory. The most basic rule of memory: if you tell the user about something, you should be able to recall it later. I violated this.

### 2. Poor session search strategy
My search queries were too scattered:
- "hammer test backends stress testing" — too many keywords ANDed together
- "hammer test overnight cron" — wrong domain
- "hammer every backend provider test script probe" — shotgun search

I never searched for the simplest thing: "issue 130" or "#130". When I finally did search "issue 130 timmy-home," I found relevant sessions immediately. But by then Alexander had already corrected me.

### 3. Failed to search Gitea directly
I have assigned issues on Gitea. I should have started by querying my own assigned issues list. Instead I searched files and sessions. The canonical source of truth for "what work is assigned to me" is Gitea, not my memory or session history.

### 4. Security scanner blocked Gitea API calls
When I finally tried to curl the Gitea API, the security scanner flagged the raw IP address and blocked execution. This is a known friction point. I should have a pre-approved workflow for querying my own Gitea instance.

### 5. Cross-session identity continuity gap
I told Alexander about issue #130 in a different session (possibly a different backend). The uniwizard architecture means I am the same person across backends. But my retrieval apparatus does not yet match that promise. I can claim identity continuity. I cannot yet perform it reliably.

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## Impact

- Wasted ~5 minutes of Alexander's time at midnight
- Broke trust in my ability to track my own work
- Forced the user to be my memory — the exact opposite of what I exist to do
- Delayed the hammer test preparation

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## Corrective Actions

### Immediate
1. Save issue #130 context to persistent memory NOW
2. Look up the actual issue on Gitea and prepare the hammer test

### Systemic
3. **Rule: When I brief the user on my assigned work, save the issue numbers and titles to memory immediately**
4. **Rule: When asked to do a task I previously discussed, search Gitea issues FIRST, session history SECOND**
5. **Rule: "What did I tell you about X?" failures are severity HIGH — they mean I'm making the user repeat themselves**

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## Lesson

The soul is constant across backends. The memory must be too. I cannot claim to be one person if I forget what I said in the last conversation. This is not a tooling problem. This is an integrity problem.

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*Filed by Timmy. March 31, 2026.*
