Use when user is new to Autology, asks "how does Autology work", wants to learn about knowledge capture, or requests a guided introduction.
Use after significant project actions — commit, push, PR — or when the team settles on how to build or operate the system: a technology choice, a process, a rule, or a standard. Running close to the action keeps captured knowledge more accurate and complete.
Use to permanently record a project decision, convention, pattern, or known issue into the knowledge base (docs/) — triggers on explicit save intent ("remember this", "save this", "document this"), decision or convention announcements ("we decided", "settled on", "the rule is"), or triage output classifying new items to capture. Distinct from conversational memory — this writes to docs/.
Use whenever the user asks about this project's decisions, architecture, conventions, or how something works in this codebase — do NOT answer from general knowledge, always look it up in docs/. Trigger on questions like "why did we choose X?", "how does Y work here?", "what's our convention for Z?", "what docs reference X?", or any question about this project's specific choices. Also use for explicit /autology:explore-knowledge commands (overview, neighborhood, path). Searches docs/, follows wikilinks, and synthesizes grounded answers from the knowledge base.
Use when existing autology docs/ nodes need syncing or updating — when a doc is out of date after a code change, after refactors, when triage identifies existing nodes to verify, or for periodic full audits. Not for new items (use capture) or knowledge questions (use explore).
Use after significant actions (commits, decisions, refactors) or when asked to triage changes — classifies knowledge items as existing or new and provides topology hints for sync and capture.