ck recall — Reference

Retrieves knowledge snippets: domain rules, architectural decisions, gotchas, and cross-module relationships accumulated by previous sessions.

When to use

• After confirming a target folder (post ck expand-folder or ck signatures) — always run ck recall --folder <path> before reading method bodies. This is step 2.5 in the protocol.
• When you encounter unfamiliar domain behaviour that isn't explained by the code structure.
• Before starting work in a module you haven't touched this session.

Syntax

# Folder mode — primary usage
.claude/skills/ck/ck recall --folder <path>

# Cross-folder semantic search
.claude/skills/ck/ck recall --query "<text>" [--top <n>]

Options

Option	Description
--folder <path>	Return all snippets for this folder, newest first. No index required.
--query <text>	Semantic search across all snippets. Auto-builds knowledge index.
--top <n>	Max results for --query mode (default: 10)
--repo <path>	Repo root (default: auto-detect)

Output

Folder mode:

[2026-04-22] id:550e8400  tags:interac,refund,terminal  status:fresh
Interac refunds require card-present because Interac's network rules mandate cardholder
authentication at the terminal. Unlike Visa/MC which support online refunds, Interac has no
offline refund path.

Query mode:

0.8234	id:550e8400
Interac refunds require card-present...

Silent (no output, exit 0) when no snippets exist — not an error. Also silent when the repo has "brain": false in .ck.json.

Behaviour

• --folder reads directly from every .jsonl file under .ck-knowledge/ and prints snippet freshness status (fresh, review_needed, unknown) from lazy validation metadata.
• --query uses the knowledge index (auto-built from all knowledge JSONL files on first use).
• If no .ck-knowledge/**/*.jsonl files exist yet, both modes exit silently.