Summary

The SessionStart hook currently outputs a static reminder telling Claude to call ghost_list_projects and ghost_project_context. This relies on the agent remembering to act on it, which is unreliable.

The hook should automatically query the ghost DB and inject the full project context into the session-start output, so the agent has everything it needs from the first message without any tool calls.

Desired behavior

When Claude Code starts a session in a known project directory, the hook output should look like:

## Ghost context: dingo

**Summary:** <learned_context from ghost_state>

**Memories:**
- [convention] nerdctl command is ...
- [preference] do not use kubectl set env ...
- [fact] ...

Save new discoveries with ghost_memory_save during work.

If no matching project is found, fall back to the existing static reminder.

Implementation

File: internal/mcpinit/hook.go

Changes needed to HandleSessionStartHook

1. Parse stdin JSON (Claude Code sends {"cwd": "/path/to/project", "source": "startup", ...})
2. Open ghost.db read-only using config.DataDir() + sql.Open("sqlite", path+"?mode=ro&...")
3. Find matching project:
   • First try: WHERE ? LIKE path || '%' AND LENGTH(path) > 10 (full path match for projects with absolute paths)
   • Fallback: WHERE name = filepath.Base(cwd) (name match from cwd basename)
4. Query ghost_state.learned_context for the project summary
5. Query top 25 memories: ORDER BY pinned DESC, importance DESC, updated_at DESC
6. Truncate memory content at 300 chars
7. Format and write to stdout
8. On any error, fall back to static reminder text

Key constraints

• Must not run migrations (do not use memory.OpenDB — open database/sql directly)
• Read-only DB access only (?mode=ro)
• Always fall back gracefully — hook failure must not block session start
• Keep latency low (single DB open, 2 queries max)

Imports needed

import (
    "database/sql"
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "io"
    "os"
    "path/filepath"
    "strings"

    "github.com/wcatz/ghost/internal/config"
    _ "modernc.org/sqlite"
)

Test

echo '{"cwd":"/home/wayne/git/dingo","source":"startup"}' | ./ghost hook session-start
# Should output Ghost context: dingo with memories, not the static reminder

Related

• CLAUDE.md updated to: "Ghost auto-seeds project context via the session-start hook — read it before doing anything"
• ghost_project_context tool call at session start is no longer needed once this is in