Last Updated: 7/24/2026

Recall and Search

Recall resumes one branch. Search finds a decision across all branches.

Both feed old context back to you, so people mix them up. They do different jobs.

If you only remember one thing: Recall pulls one branch’s full history into your next AI session so you can keep going where you left off. Search scans every branch for a decision, topic, or commit when you do not remember where it lives.

Recall: resume one branch

Recall compiles everything Memory knows about a single branch - its commit summaries, the decisions behind them, attached plans and notes, and file-change stats - into a briefing for your AI agent. One branch, full depth. Use it to continue your own work after a break, or to pick up a branch someone else built.

Automatic vs explicit

Automatic, Claude Code only. When you start a Claude Code session in a repo with Memories, a compact [Jolli Memory — <branch>] block (about 300 to 500 tokens) prepends the conversation: branch name, recent Memories, key decisions, and pinned plans. It is small enough not to eat your context budget. After 3 days of inactivity on a branch, the briefing starts suggesting you run a full Recall.

The automatic briefing runs on feature branches only. It is skipped on the shared branches main, master, develop, development, staging, and production (an exact, case-sensitive match, so a branch named Main or release/2.0 still gets one). Skipping the automatic briefing does not disable recall: you can always pull any branch’s context on demand with jolli recall <branch> (for example jolli recall main).

Every assistant other than Claude Code pulls context manually instead of getting the automatic briefing.

Explicit, any agent. Inside Claude Code, run /jolli-recall (or /jolli-recall <branch>) for a deeper pull. From the CLI:

jolli recall

With no argument, Recall uses your current git branch. Pass a branch name to recall a different one. If the name does not match a recorded branch, Recall lists the branches it has. (jolli recall is also available under the alias jolli context.)

Short summary vs full context

A bare jolli recall prints a short, human-readable summary for the terminal: last commit, topic counts, a few key decisions, files changed. That is a digest, not the full context.

To get the full context (the version worth feeding to an AI agent), add a flag:

jolli recall --full            # full markdown to your terminal
jolli recall --format json     # structured payload for a skill or agent
jolli recall --output ctx.md   # full markdown written to a file

Useful flags

The everyday ones: --full (full context instead of the short summary), --budget <tokens> (default 20,000; raise it when a long branch truncates, since lower-priority fields are trimmed first), and --format <md|json> (JSON for a skill or agent). See Reference for the complete set: --depth, --output, --include-transcripts, --no-plans, and --catalog.

Search: find a decision across branches

Search runs a full-text, relevance-ranked query over your distilled commit summaries across every branch in the repo. It returns lightweight hits, each with a title, a short snippet, the branch it belongs to, and the commit. It does not return the full decision text per hit - it points you to where the answer lives.

From the CLI:

jolli search "why did we switch to JWT"

Reach for Search when you are asking “have we handled X before”, “why did we choose X over Y”, or “which commit touched that half-remembered ticket or file”.

Useful flags

The common ones: --limit <n> (default 20, max 100), --branch <branch>, --type <topic|commit>, and --format <json|text> (default json). See Reference for the full set.

Tip: jolli search prints JSON by default. For a quick terminal read, add --format text for a one-line-per-hit view.

Then recall the hit’s branch for depth

Search hits are intentionally shallow. When a hit looks right, run Recall on that hit’s branch to load the full rationale and decisions:

jolli recall <branch-from-the-hit>

Search finds the branch. Recall gives you its full story.

Which one do I want?

Rule of thumb: you know the branch, use Recall. You are hunting a topic, use Search.

Commands by surface

The sidebar “Search Memories” box is a filter, not full-text Search

This is the most common mix-up.

The “Search Memories” box in the VS Code and IntelliJ sidebar is not jolli search. It is a case-insensitive substring filter over the Memories list. In VS Code and its forks (Cursor, Windsurf) it matches on commit message, branch name, and repo name; in IntelliJ it matches on commit message and branch name only. Either way it does not read inside the Why, Decisions, or Implementation text, and it does not use the full-text ranking that jolli search does.

So if you type a decision detail into the sidebar box and get nothing, that is expected. The box narrows the visible list of stored Memories; it does not search their contents.

To search decision and topic text across branches, use one of these instead:

• jolli search "<query>" from the CLI.
• /jolli-search <query> in Claude Code (or another agent with the skill).
• The search MCP tool, if your agent is wired to Memory over MCP.

Related

• Getting Started with Jolli Memory - install, sign in, and your first Memory.
• Reference - the full recall and search flag lists, and config keys.
• Connect Memory to Your AI Assistant (MCP) - run recall and search conversationally, no CLI.