By name: distill description: Extract reusable principles and decision frameworks from accumulated experience. Use after significant work sessions, project milestones, or when you notice recurring patterns worth codifying. argument-hint: [domain or topic to distill] user-invocable: true allowed-tools: Read, Glob, Grep, Bash
Distill wisdom from experience in this area: $ARGUMENTS
Process
1. Experience Inventory
Gather evidence of past decisions and outcomes:
- Read recent git history (
git log --oneline -20) - Review agent memory and learnings
- Check
.Codex/rules/for existing principles - Look at code patterns in the codebase
2. Pattern Extraction
For each significant decision or outcome:
- What was decided? (the choice made)
- What was the context? (constraints, information available)
- What happened? (outcome, downstream effects)
- Was it the right call? (with hindsight)
Look for:
- Success patterns — conditions that consistently lead to good outcomes
- Failure patterns — early warning signs of bad paths
- Evolution patterns — how thinking has changed over time
3. Principle Abstraction
Distill patterns into principles at the right abstraction level:
| Level | Example |
|---|---|
| Tactical | "Always run tests before committing database migrations" |
| Strategic | "Prefer reversible changes over irreversible ones" |
| Philosophical | "Optimize for time-to-signal, not time-to-completion" |
A good principle is:
- Actionable — you can act on it right now
- Falsifiable — you can identify situations where it doesn't apply
- Bounded — it states when it applies, not just what to do
4. Validation
Check each principle against past experience:
- Does it explain observed outcomes?
- Are there counter-examples?
- Under what conditions does it break?
5. Storage
Write validated principles to the appropriate location:
- Project-wide:
.Codex/rules/as a new or updated rule file - Agent-specific: Agent memory
- Session-specific:
MEMORY.md
Tag with freshness: HOT (just validated) | WARM (reasonable but not recently tested) | COLD (theoretical)
6. Output
## Distillation: [Domain]
### Evidence Base
- [N decisions/outcomes reviewed]
- [Key sources consulted]
### Principles Extracted
#### [Principle Name]
- **Statement**: [Clear, actionable principle]
- **Level**: tactical | strategic | philosophical
- **Evidence**: [What experience supports this]
- **Boundary**: [When this does NOT apply]
- **Freshness**: HOT | WARM | COLD
- **Stored in**: [where it was written]
### Principles Updated
- [Any existing principles promoted, demoted, or retired]
### Open Questions
- [What we still don't know]