Session Librarian

Manage the user's session library conversationally: find past sessions about a
topic, summarize what they decided, rename them meaningfully, split work into
parallel sessions, and propose stale ones for archive or deletion — all from a
plain-language request like "find my sessions about Q3 pricing, keep the
useful ones, and clean up the duplicates."

Inspired by Perplexity Computer's prompt-driven session management (Aug 2026):
the agent starts, organizes, and cleans up the user's own session library, and
always shows the plan before touching anything.

When to Use

• "What sessions do I have about X?" / "What did we decide about X?"
• "Rename these sessions to something meaningful."
• "Clean up my session library" / "archive the stale ones."
• "Fork that session into a follow-up focused on Y."
• "Split this into one session per ticket" (see Parallel workstreams below).

The Two Surfaces

Task	Surface
Find sessions by topic, read content, summarize decisions	session_search tool (FTS5 over the message store)
List/filter by metadata (age, source, cost, tokens, workspace)	hermes sessions list / stats via terminal
Rename	hermes sessions rename <session_id> <title...>
Bulk soft-hide (reversible)	hermes sessions archive <filters>
Delete (destructive)	hermes sessions delete / hermes sessions prune <filters>
Export before deleting anything valuable	hermes sessions export --session-id <id> --format md
Continue work in a new place	/branch (fork current session) or start a fresh session and cite the summary

Procedure

① Discover. Use session_search(query=..., limit=5-10) with topic
keywords; vary phrasing (feature name, symptom, project name). For metadata
sweeps ("sessions older than 60 days from telegram"), use
hermes sessions list --source telegram --limit 50 instead.

② Summarize per session. The discovery result's bookend_start (goal),
match window, and bookend_end (resolution) usually suffice — only dump a
full session (session_search(session_id=...)) when the user asks for
decisions in depth. Report each as: link (@session: form) — one-line goal —
one-line outcome.

③ Plan before acting (MANDATORY for anything that mutates). Present a
plan table first: which sessions get renamed to what, which get archived,
which are proposed for deletion and why (duplicate of which keeper, stale,
empty). Wait for the user's go-ahead. Exception: a single rename the user
explicitly dictated can be done directly.

④ Act with the safest primitive.

• Prefer archive (reversible soft-hide) over delete/prune.
• Always run destructive commands with --dry-run first and show the output,
  then re-run with --yes after confirmation.
• Before deleting anything with meaningful content, offer
  hermes sessions export --format md as a backup.

⑤ Report. Renames applied, sessions archived (count + how to undo:
archived sessions remain in the DB and are listed with --include-archived),
anything exported, anything skipped and why.

Parallel Workstreams

For "one session per ticket, investigate each, report back": do NOT try to
drive other live sessions. Use delegate_task with one task per workstream —
each subagent runs in its own session automatically — then synthesize their
summaries. Mention that each delegation's transcript is itself searchable
later via session_search.

Pitfalls

• Never delete without a dry-run + explicit confirmation in this
  conversation. A standing "clean things up" is authority to propose, not
  to prune.
• session_search finds content, not metadata. Age/cost/source filters
  live in the CLI; combine both when the request mixes them ("old sessions
  about pricing").
• Titles are identity for /resume <title>. When renaming, keep titles
  short, unique, and prefix-friendly; warn the user if a rename collides with
  an existing title.
• Archived ≠ deleted. Archive hides sessions from default listings only.
  Say which one you did.
• Cross-profile session links (@session:<profile>/<id>) are read-only
  from another profile; management commands act on the current profile's DB.

Verification

After a cleanup pass, re-run the discovery query and hermes sessions list
to confirm the library reflects the plan (keepers present with new titles,
archived ones gone from the default listing).