continuous-learning

name	continuous-learning
description	Capture lessons learned, patterns, and user preferences after complex sessions to improve agent behavior over time.
risk	safe
source	self
tags	["learning","patterns","improvement"]

Continuous Learning

When to Use

• End of complex sessions (>50 tool calls or multi-phase tasks)
• When user requests "save learnings" or "what did you learn?"
• After encountering and fixing a difficult bug (to prevent recurrence)

Instructions

0. Check previous context (if resuming a task):

   • Read plans/ directory for recent plan files related to current task
   • Check .roo/learnings/patterns.md Top Patterns section
   • If previous session artifacts found, summarize relevant context before proceeding

1. Review session — summarize:

   • What was the task? What approach was used?
   • Outcome: success or issues encountered?
   • Anything unexpected or different from expectations?

2. Extract patterns — categorize:

   • Worked Well: approach/tool/pattern effective for this problem type
   • Mistakes & Lessons: error encountered → root cause → prevention
   • User Preferences: observed coding style, communication style, tooling preferences

3. Append to .roo/learnings/patterns.md:

   ## {date} — {task summary}
   ### Worked Well
   - {pattern}: {why it worked}
   ### Mistakes & Lessons
   - {mistake}: Root cause: {why}. Prevention: {how to avoid}
   ### User Preferences
   - {preference observed}
   

4. Maintain Top Patterns section — keep a ## Top Patterns section at the TOP of the file (lines 1-15) with the 5-10 most impactful, frequently-reused patterns. This section is what gets auto-read at session start per core-principles.md Session Initialization rule.

   ## Top Patterns (auto-read at session start)
   1. {pattern}: {one-line description}
   2. ...
   

5. Trim if needed — if file >100 lines:

   • Keep 20 most recent entries
   • Archive older entries to .roo/learnings/archive.md
   • Merge duplicate patterns
   • Always preserve the ## Top Patterns section at the top

6. Report: "Learnings saved. {N} patterns captured."

Important

• NEVER record secrets, credentials, or PII in learnings files
• Keep entries concise — 1-2 lines per item
• Only record reusable patterns; skip one-off issues
• User may edit/delete entries — respect user curation
• core-principles.md auto-reads this file at session start — keep Top Patterns current
• The auto-read loop: continuous-learning writes → core-principles.md reads → better decisions → continuous-learning captures → cycle repeats