ADR-v2-005 — Spoken Recall & Ambient Scratch¶

Status: Accepted (2026-07-02) · Wave B Context links: [[adr-v2-000-interaction-layer]], [[adr-011]] (offline), [[adr-012-self-improvement-loop]] (encrypted corpus)

Context¶

The ambient research (internal) shows the market retreating from cloud lifelogging (Microsoft Recall backlash; Rewind→Limitless→Meta collapse with EU/UK shutdown). Nobody credibly owns "ambient personal memory that provably never leaves your machine." YazSes already has the exact asset: an encrypted, machine-bound corpus (ADR-012) and a no-telemetry stance — and it is the only process that already sees what you deliberately dictate.

Decision¶

Two opt-in capabilities over the existing encrypted corpus: 1. Ambient Scratch — a dedicated hotkey transcribes speech straight into the corpus as a timestamped, app-tagged "note to self" without injecting into any app. 2. Spoken Recall — a hold-to-talk query answered from that corpus, offline: retrieve passages by semantic similarity (sqlite-vec over a local embedder, reusing the voiceprint/embedding infra) or, initially, the Karpathy plain-text/agent-read pattern over decrypted text. A distinct "recall mode" ensures a query is never typed into the focused app; results surface via overlay/read-back.

Config: [recall] enabled=false, scratch_hotkey, index=embedding|plaintext, max_results. New package recall/ (query + index); capture reuses learning/capture. Strictly push-to-talk (no always-on mic); honors ADR-012 redaction/retention.

Consequences¶

• + Fills the post-Recall trust vacuum with a consent-first, on-device memory of your own words; strong differentiator.
• + Reuses corpus + crypto + embedder; capture path already exists.
• − Retrieval quality on a sparse personal corpus is uncertain → start with plaintext/ recency, add embeddings once corpus grows; clear recall-mode UX so queries don't leak into apps.
• − Scope-creep risk toward "always listening" → strictly push-to-talk, opt-in.