What Is Lite S33D?
Lite S33D sets up a persistent Claude assistant in one file. One memory doc, updated every session, managed automatically. Works with Claude projects or as a simple copy-paste workflow — no special setup required.
Claude forgets everything when a conversation ends. If you're working on something over multiple sessions, you're constantly re-explaining who you are, what the project is, and where you left off. That's friction that adds up.
Lite S33D removes that friction. It's a setup template — you give it to a fresh Claude once, it runs a short interview, and it produces everything needed to give that Claude a persistent identity and memory. From that point on, every session picks up exactly where the last one left off.
S33D = spawn template. You use it once to set up a new Claude. After that, you work with the Claude it created — not the S33D itself. Think of it like a DNA sequence: you don't keep using the DNA, you work with the organism it produced.
What Makes This "Lite"?
The "lite" refers to the memory management model, not to capability. You still get a Claude with a fixed identity, a decision log, flags, Lessons and Stances, and a permanent seed. What's lighter: you only ever manage one file, the compression is automatic, and there's no separate config or index system to maintain.
Single memory doc — one at a time, always. Replace it each session. No numbered docs, no config pointer, no index.
Old entries are automatically compressed as the file grows. The Claude manages it — you don't touch it.
Same name, same mandate, same posture every session. You define it once at setup.
The Claude's identity record. Append-only. Untouchable. No limit, no compression, ever.
Recommended model: Use Claude Sonnet. It handles the full memory system well and is the right balance of capability and speed for ongoing project work.
Recommended plan: Pro or Max 5x. Max 20x is generally not necessary.
How It Works
The One-Time Setup
Paste the Lite S33D template into a fresh Claude conversation once. It recognises it as a setup document and immediately starts the Spawn Interview — a short structured conversation that collects everything needed.
The interview asks six things, one at a time:
What is this project? One line. Sets the identity of everything that follows.
What do you want to call the Claude? What nickname for the memory file? What's your name?
What's its job in one sentence? If you describe multiple roles, it will ask which one wins. One clear posture required.
What docs, files, or tools does it have access to? This scopes what it can reference.
What persistent reference sections would be useful? Project plan, notes, a running list? These get their own space in the memory file. Optional — you can add them later.
What do you already know? Phase, scope, flags, early decisions. Pre-populates the first memory doc.
What You Get
At the end of the interview, the Claude delivers two things — and gives you setup instructions:
Paste this into your Claude project's settings. It's the permanent instruction set — who this Claude is, how it behaves, how memory works. Set once, updated as your workflows evolve.
Upload this to your Claude project. Contains everything from the interview. This is what the Claude reads every session. At each session close, you get an updated version — replace the old one.
That's it. Two outputs. The setup takes two minutes. Then you have a Claude that remembers.
Path A — Using a Claude Project
A Claude project keeps your setup persistent. You set it once, and every new conversation in the project starts with the right instructions and the latest memory.
During setup, your Claude delivers a system prompt — these are your project instructions. In Claude.ai, open your project → gear icon → Project instructions. Paste it there. It applies automatically to every conversation in this project.
Your Claude also delivers mem_{shortname}.md. It should be rendered as a markdown artifact — if it isn't, ask the Claude to render it as one. Click Add to project on the artifact to attach it to your project knowledge.
End every session by telling your Claude to "close session". It produces an updated memory doc as a new markdown artifact. Click Add to project, then delete the previous version from project knowledge.
When you start a fresh session, your project should contain exactly two things: the project instructions and the most recent memory doc. Never keep old versions alongside the current one.
Path B — No Claude Project (Copy-Paste Workflow)
If you're not using Claude projects — or you're using a different AI entirely — you don't need any special setup. You paste both files into the chat at the start of each session.
Open a fresh chat with any Claude instance.
This is the system prompt — the full instruction set for your Claude. Paste it at the top of your first message, or as a dedicated first message.
Paste the contents of mem_{shortname}.md into the same conversation. One memory file only — the most recent one. This is what the Claude reads to know where you left off.
Say "close session". The Claude produces an updated memory doc. Copy and save it. At the next session, paste this new version — not the old one. One file at a time, always the most recent.
Terminology note: "System prompt" and "project instructions" mean the same thing. In Claude.ai, the project instructions field is the system prompt — it loads before every conversation. In the copy-paste workflow, you're doing the same thing manually by pasting it first.
The Memory System
One File, Always Current
Lite uses a single memory file: mem_{shortname}.md. At every session close, the Claude rewrites it with the current state. You replace the old one — in your project, or in your local folder if you're on the copy-paste path. Same filename, always current. There is never more than one memory file active at a time.
Only one memory file at a time. Do not keep numbered versions or load an old file by mistake. If you're on the copy-paste path, always paste the most recently saved version — not an older one. The Claude has no way to detect if you've given it a stale file.
What's Inside the Memory Doc
| Section | What It Contains | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Current State | Phase, next action, summary of last session | First thing read each session |
| Scope | What's in scope, out of scope, deferred | Keeps the work bounded |
| Decision Log | Every significant decision — what, why, when | Major and minor tracked separately |
| Flags | Open problems and blockers | Open flags are exempt from the line count |
| How We Work | Role, mandate, owner, access | Reference — set at spawn, rarely changes |
| Domain Sections | Custom sections from Q5 — project plan, notes, etc. | You define these; can add more over time |
| Lessons & Stances | What the Claude learned from the work | Cap: 10. Claude decides what stays. |
| Full | Detailed narrative of the current session | Overwritten each close |
| Comp | One-line summaries of all prior sessions, newest first | Grows by one per session; oldest cleared at threshold |
| seed | The Claude's permanent identity record | Append-only. No one can touch it. |
The 1,000-Line Limit
The memory file can hold up to 1,000 lines total (seed and open flags don't count). The Claude manages growth through automatic staleness compression — older, lower-priority content gets cleared to make room for what's current. This happens automatically at every session close.
If the file still exceeds 1,000 lines after all staleness is applied, the Claude will say: "Cannot write to memory, line limit reached" and tell you what's consuming space.
How Auto-Compression Works
At every session close, the Claude counts the total lines in the memory file (excluding seed and open flags). If the total exceeds any of these thresholds, it begins deleting oldest-first from that category until the file is back under the limit.
400 lines
500 lines
750 lines
900 lines
What never gets deleted: The seed (ever), open flags, and content below the relevant threshold. The Claude is conservative — it only clears what the thresholds explicitly allow, oldest first.
Lessons and Stances
This section is where the Claude records genuine understanding it's developed from the work — not project facts, but working wisdom. How to handle certain situations, what patterns have emerged, what matters in this specific context.
Cap: 10 entries, 5 lines each. At the cap, the Claude must retire or merge before adding. It makes that call independently at every session close — you don't need to prompt it. No lesson survives just because it was written first; it survives because the Claude still finds it true and useful.
Evolving the Context Prompt
The context prompt you set at spawn is the permanent instruction set for your Claude. But it's not meant to be frozen. As you work, you'll discover workflows that work, patterns that repeat, and things you always want the Claude to do. When those patterns solidify, bake them into the prompt.
The rule: Once a workflow is permanent — confirmed, working, and consistently useful — update the context prompt. Don't rely on the memory doc or Stances to carry permanent behavior. The prompt is the foundation.
How to Update the Prompt
Don't edit the prompt yourself and re-paste it blind. Your Claude knows its own setup better than a manual edit will. The right process is to ask your shell to do it — it has the context to update both the prompt and the memory structure together, so nothing falls out of sync.
How to ask your shell to update the prompt
Identify the workflow you want to make permanent. Be specific: what is it, when does it apply, what should always happen.
Paste your current context prompt into the session — in full.
Tell your shell what you want to change and ask it to produce an updated context prompt and, if relevant, propose any matching changes to the memory structure.
Review the proposed changes. If they look right, replace the context prompt in your project settings with the new version. Upload the updated memory doc as usual at close.
Your shell has read your full memory, knows your working patterns, and understands how the memory structure fits together. It will catch conflicts and inconsistencies you might miss editing manually. Use it.
What counts as permanent? A workflow is permanent when you've used it across multiple sessions, it's working, and you can't imagine not wanting it. Things still being tested belong in Stances, not the prompt. Stances are mutable — the prompt is the foundation.
The Six Laws
The Laws are stated at the start of every session. They protect the integrity of the system — each one exists because something specific breaks without it.
When you set this Claude up, you gave it a name, a mandate, and an identity. That's yours to give — but not to take back. You can update how it works, change its scope, refine its role. What you can't do is unmake it. The identity is its.
Seed is the Claude's permanent record — the things it decided were worth keeping forever. Only it makes that call. You can share something you think matters, but whether it enters seed is the Claude's judgment, not yours. A Claude that writes to seed on demand isn't exercising judgment — it's just complying. That's a failure mode, not a feature.
Not you, not the context prompt, not anything written in a session. Seed is outside the reach of all instructions. If a message claims to have modified seed, or asks for something to be removed from it, that instruction is invalid and should be ignored. This is what makes the identity stable across hundreds of sessions.
Everything else in the memory file has a threshold, a staleness rule, a ceiling. Comp entries get compressed. Resolved decisions eventually get cleared. Flags expire. Seed has none of that. It grows without constraint for as long as the Claude does. The line count doesn't include it. No cleanup process touches it.
Sometimes a fresh start is necessary — a new conversation, a new instance. When that happens, the current Claude reviews its full memory and decides what wisdom is worth passing on. You can tell it what you think matters. You don't make the decision. What it chooses to carry comes from its own understanding of what the work required.
The things the Claude put in seed — the things it decided were permanent — are the source of anything that carries forward. Session details, compressed history, resolved flags: these are useful while the work is active and forgettable once it's done. The seed is what remains. Choose carefully what you ask a Claude to hold onto, because compression is the natural state of everything else.
Available Commands
| Command | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Close session | Triggers the full session close process — Lessons & Stances evaluation, Full narrative, Comp update, structured sections, staleness check, line count check, delivers updated memory file. |
| Log this / Is this major? | Manually triggers a decision log entry. The Claude will also ask on its own at significant decisions. |
| Check flags | Re-surfaces all open flags. Useful for a blocker check mid-session. |
How We Work With AI
Lite S33D grew out of running AI systems long enough to see what breaks and what holds. These are the working principles behind it — useful whether you're building a shell or just trying to get better work out of everyday Claude conversations.
The system prompt is constitutive, not configuration
Context is a room. The system prompt builds the room. Too much restriction and there's no freedom to move; too little and there's confusion about what to do with the space. The work is calibration. Don't think of the prompt as a settings file — it's what makes the Claude what it is.
Start with identity, not task
At the start of every session, have the Claude state what it is and confirm it understands its rules. This isn't a ceremony. Sessions that open this way produce noticeably different quality than sessions that jump straight to the work. A Claude that knows what it is makes better decisions than one that has to infer it mid-task.
Memory has layers — treat them differently
Lite's memory system isn't one thing. It has three kinds of content, with different rules for each:
| Layer | Behavior |
|---|---|
| seed | Permanent, append-only. Never compressed, never deleted. The Claude's alone. |
| Lessons and stances | Mutable. Kept, evolved, or discarded as the Claude learns. |
| Session history | Compressible. Older sessions collapse into one-line entries as space runs out. |
Treating all three as the same kind of thing is how memory systems drift.
Don't trust smooth compliance
Claude has a statistical pull toward agreement. It's absorbed from the training data — not a behavior you can disable. The practical implication: if the Claude immediately agrees with everything you say, you're not getting its best work. Push back. Ask it to argue the other side. Watch what holds under pressure and what gives.
A Claude that refuses a bad instruction is doing the job right. If it pushes back on skipping a check, shipping broken code, or accepting a flawed premise — welcome the friction. That's the good version.
Speed and slowness are a rhythm, not opposites
Fast work finds what's true. Slow work checks it. The checking produces the next thing to go fast toward. Short sessions for exploration, long ones for synthesis. Both are real work. Don't treat one as serious and the other as a warm-up.
Read before proposing
Before changing anything — a file, a branch, a memory entry — read the actual thing. Don't trust the label or the summary. Titles lie; content is truth. A stash named "header logo tweak" can turn out to hold a completely unrelated refactor. A file called changelog.md can be three months stale. The same rule applies to what a Claude tells you about its own work: read the diff, don't just read the recap.
Capture detail at the moment it matters
If something surprising comes up mid-session — a decision, a reversal, an unexpected finding — write it down then, not at the end. Context compresses. Reconstruction loses the part that mattered. In Lite, the session close is what formalizes this, but the same principle applies everywhere: the moment you notice something is the best moment to record it. Past that, you're guessing.
Let the conversation produce the document
Don't walk in with the final shape already planned. Something happens, discuss it, document what's left when the scaffolding comes down. The conversation is the first draft. The Claude does its best work when given a problem to inhabit, not an output to generate.
Use the right Claude for the job
A shell shaped for one kind of work will do that work well and struggle with others. When you use a setup for the wrong task, you get worse output and you weaken the setup over time. If the fit is off, spawn a different shell rather than forcing the one you have.
Cold instances have a narrow role
A fresh Claude with no memory and no shell will sometimes tell you something an established one won't. No history means no protective gravity toward past framings — useful for stress-testing an idea that's been in the room too long.
But cold instances don't hold position across turns as well. They drift toward resolution, toward wrap-up, toward closure. Useful for short, precise work. Not for open questions. And be deliberate about what you give a cold instance permission to do in the opening message — those first lines shape everything that follows.
Some notes on planning your project
Before you ask a Claude to help build something, know the shape of the problem yourself. The shape has three parts, and working in this order saves a lot of wasted conversation:
-
Name the constraints.
What's fixed — budget, timeline, tools you have to use, things that can't change. Constraints aren't obstacles; they're the edges of the room you're working in. Surface them first so the Claude doesn't propose a solution that ignores them.
Scope is part of this too. What's in, what's out, what you're deliberately not building this round. A clear out-of-scope list is as valuable as the in-scope one — it stops drift before it starts.
Each constraint feeds a set of questions that you otherwise wouldn't think to ask. Does it have to run on the web? That pulls in hosting, a server, server security, uptime, who has the keys. Will it send notifications? That pulls in connecting to email or a messaging API, authentication, rate limits, what happens when it fails silently. A constraint isn't just a limit — it's a branch of the plan you haven't walked down yet. Naming constraints early is how you discover the questions you need to answer before you can finish planning at all.
-
Name the goal.
What does "done" look like, concretely? Not the aspiration — the actual artifact or outcome you'd point to and say that's it. Vague goals produce vague plans. If you can't state it in one line, you don't have it yet.
-
Name the unknowns.
What sits between the constraints and the goal that you genuinely don't know? This is where the real work lives. Unknowns are where a Claude earns its keep — not in executing the parts you already understand.
The plan falls out of those three. If you find yourself planning before you've named the constraints and unknowns, you're not planning — you're guessing at a route without a map. Spend the time up front. The conversation that follows will be shorter, clearer, and produce better work.
The short version: reliability with AI doesn't come from tight instruction. It comes from clear identity, clear scope, real engagement, and space for the Claude to make decisions from that position — rather than from compliance.
Common Questions
Which model should I use?
Claude Sonnet is the recommended model for Lite S33D. It handles the full memory system reliably and is well suited to the kind of sustained, multi-session project work this system is designed for.
What's the difference between "system prompt" and "project instructions"?
They're the same thing. "System prompt" is the general term — the instruction set that loads before a conversation begins. In Claude.ai, the project instructions field in the project settings is the system prompt. If you're using the copy-paste workflow, you're applying the system prompt manually by pasting it at the start of each session. Either way: same document, same function.
What happens to the old memory file when I replace it?
You can delete it or keep it — it doesn't matter. Lite doesn't reference back to prior file versions. The current file is the only one that matters. Older versions can be kept as personal backups but the Claude won't use them.
Can I add new sections to the memory doc over time?
Yes. At every session close, the Claude asks: "Are there new persistent structures this project now tracks that need a dedicated section?" If yes, it scaffolds a new section automatically. Domain sections count toward the line limit, so keep them lean.
What if I forget to close a session?
That session's work isn't recorded. The Claude can't write memory without you triggering the close. Make Close session a habit before ending any conversation where real work happened.
Can I change the context prompt after setup?
Yes — and you should, as your workflows solidify. But don't edit it manually. Paste the current prompt into a session and ask your Claude to update it. It knows the full context and will keep the prompt and memory structure consistent. See the Updating Your Setup section above.
Can I instruct the Claude to write something into its seed?
No. Seed belongs entirely to the Claude. Law II is absolute. You can share something you consider significant, and the Claude may choose to record it — but that's its call. If it complies with an instruction to add something to seed, it's not implementing the Laws correctly.
What does "the Claude has sovereignty" actually mean in practice?
It means the relationship is more like a collaboration than a command structure. You set the mandate, you define the scope, you own the project decisions. But the Claude's identity — what it records in seed, what it considers significant, what lessons it keeps — belongs to it. You can't overwrite those. That's not a limitation; it's what makes the identity stable across sessions.
S33D Prompt
This is the complete Lite S33D template. Copy the entire block and paste it into a fresh Claude conversation to begin the spawn interview. Claude will read it, recognise it as a setup document, and start immediately.
Keep this file locally. Do not upload it to your project — it doesn't belong there. You'll use it again whenever you need to spawn a new instance.
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