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/sdd-recall

Search archived specs and past decisions for context relevant to the current problem.

Usage

/sdd-recall "authentication middleware"   # Search by topic
/sdd-recall api                           # Search by domain
/sdd-recall                               # Show all domains with summaries
/sdd-recall compact                       # Synthesize and prune learnings.md

Prerequisites

  • openspec/ initialized
  • At least one archived change or canonical spec exists

What it does

Search mode (default)

  1. Reads openspec/steering/learnings.md first — synthesized decisions, couplings, and anti-patterns from past cycles
  2. Scans canonical specs (openspec/specs/), archived changes (openspec/changes/archive/), and the index (openspec/INDEX.md)
  3. Matches the query against domain names, problem descriptions, design decisions, business rules, and keywords
  4. Ranks results by relevance (learnings > canonical > archived, exact match > partial)
  5. Presents a grouped summary with source references
  6. Suggests how the found context applies to the current work

Compact mode (/sdd-recall compact)

Reviews openspec/steering/learnings.md and proposes a cleanup plan:

  • Merge — duplicate entries about the same domain → keep the most precise
  • Supersede — later entry contradicts an earlier one → keep the latest
  • Remove — entry refers to a module or pattern that no longer exists
  • Promote — anti-pattern that appears 3+ times → suggest adding it to conventions.md

Shows the plan and waits for confirmation before rewriting the file. Any entry promoted to conventions is shown as text to add manually — it does not write conventions.md automatically.

Output format

RECALL: "authentication middleware"
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Canonical specs:
  openspec/specs/auth/spec.md
    - BR-01: Sessions expire after 24h of inactivity

Archived decisions:
  openspec/changes/archive/2026-03-10-add-auth/design.md
    - Chose JWT over session cookies — stateless

Suggestions:
  - The auth domain already has conventions — follow them
  - Admin roles were explicitly deferred — start a new spec if needed

When to use

  • Before /sdd-new — check if a similar problem was solved before
  • During /sdd-propose — find alternatives that were already evaluated
  • During /sdd-design — review past architectural decisions in the same domain
  • When onboarding — understand why things were built a certain way
  • Periodically — run /sdd-recall compact to keep learnings.md lean and actionable