The per-turn prompt was ~5.5K tokens (persona alone ~40%), sent up to 3x/turn.
Tightened by RELEVANCE (the control plane decides what each turn needs), not by
deletion — fidelity preserved, focus improved (buried instructions were getting
ignored), tokens roughly halved.
- persona split: core (identity + voice — always) vs situational sections pulled
in only when relevant. mind._persona_block: self-model/origin only on meta turns
(generous _META_HINTS), poker guardrails only in poker context (mode/strategic/
_POKER_HINTS). persona.core_prompt()/section(); system_prompt() kept as fallback.
- lean deliberation: the private 'what do I think' pass now uses a focused context
(her interiority + recent turns + the message), not the full persona/profile/
narrative/recall dump. It shapes the take, not the voice.
Measured: casual Talk turn 21,949 -> 15,974 chars (-27%); deliberation 21,949 ->
6,026 (-72%); meta turns still include the self-model. Suite 98 green, ruff clean.
Real retirement of the long prompt is still the fine-tune (mouth); this is the
cheap, high-leverage cut that also improves adherence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Phase 1 — persona + persistent memory chat loop:
- lyra/persona.py + personas/lyra.md: editable identity/voice (friend-first,
honest, never invents poker math)
- lyra/chat.py: turn loop assembling persona + cross-session recall + recent
context, persisting both sides to SQLite
- lyra/session.py, lyra/__main__.py: session lifecycle + `lyra` REPL
Phase 1.25 — reuse the old web UI:
- vendored the prior single-page UI into lyra/web/static, repointed to
same-origin
- lyra/web/server.py (FastAPI): serves the UI and backs its endpoint contract
(/v1/chat/completions, session CRUD, health, inert thinking-stream) with the
new chat loop + memory; SQLite stays the single source of truth
- `lyra-web` console script
Local backends — test for free, no OpenAI key:
- llm.embed routes via EMBED_BACKEND (cloud=OpenAI, local=Ollama /api/embed)
- simplified UI backend selector to Local (Ollama) / Cloud (OpenAI), default local
- memory connection opened check_same_thread=False for the threaded server
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
serversdown