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Pack Freshness and Refresh

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Auto-Refresh Triggers

ADE’s Job Engine automatically refreshes packs when:
EventPacks Refreshed
A commit is made in a laneThat lane’s pack
A PR is mergedProject Pack + originating lane’s pack
More than 10 files changeProject Pack
A Linear issue is updatedCorresponding Feature Pack (if any)
A new conflict is detectedConflict Pack for that pair of lanes
A mission completesMission Pack (final phase snapshot)

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Manual Refresh

You can force a refresh at any time:
  • From the Context view: Right-click any pack entry → Refresh Pack
  • From the Lane panel: Right-click a lane → Refresh Lane Pack
  • Keyboard shortcut: Focus a lane in the Lanes panel and press ⌘⇧R
  • From the CTO: Ask the CTO agent to “refresh the pack for lane X”
**Screenshot: The Context view with a right-click context menu open on a Lane Pack entry. The menu shows options: “Refresh Pack”, “View History”, “Export Pack”, “Copy Pack ID”, and “Open in Editor”. The “Refresh Pack” item is highlighted.

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Freshness Indicators

Each pack entry in the Context view shows a freshness badge:
BadgeMeaning
Green “Updated Xs ago”Pack is current
Amber “Stale”Pack is older than the configured threshold (default: 30 minutes after a change event)
Red “Very Stale”Pack has not been updated in over 2 hours despite activity in the lane
Gray “Generating…”Pack refresh is currently in progress
**Screenshot: The Context view’s pack detail panel opened for a Lane Pack — showing the full pack content with section headers clearly visible (intent, criteria, touched-files, diff-summary), a “Generated 2 minutes ago” timestamp, version number “v7”, and action buttons (Refresh, Export, View History) in the top-right corner.

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Packs in Missions

Missions consume and produce packs as first-class artifacts throughout their lifecycle. Planning Phase:
  • The Mission planner reads the Project Pack and all relevant Lane Pack(s) to understand scope.
  • The resulting Plan Pack is created at the end of planning and must be approved before execution starts.
Execution Phase:
  • The executor operates with the Plan Pack as its primary guidance document.
  • Each phase boundary creates a new Mission Pack snapshot.
Validation Phase:
  • The validator reads the Mission Pack’s execution snapshot to understand what was done.
  • Validation results are appended to the Mission Pack.
After Completion:
  • The full Mission Pack is archived in .ade/artifacts/packs/missions/<mission-id>/.
  • It can be viewed in History → Missions → [Mission] → Context Packs.

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Packs in Pull Requests

When a PR is created from a lane, ADE automatically:
  1. Includes the Lane Pack’s intent and criteria sections as the PR description template.
  2. Links any active Conflict Pack to the PR as a comment if conflicts were detected.
  3. Attaches the Lane Pack ID to the PR metadata so reviewers can access the full pack from the PR detail view.
Reviewers can click View Lane Pack in the PR panel to see the full context that guided the agent that wrote the code they are reviewing.

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Memory System Integration

Packs work together with ADE’s unified memory system. Understanding the relationship helps you predict what context agents will have in any session.
Memory TierStorageContentsLoaded When
CoreSQLite (always in RAM)Project identity, active lanes, current mission stateAlways
HotSQLite (recent rows)Last 10 sessions, recent commits, open PRsEvery session start
ColdPack files (.ade/artifacts/)Historical lane packs, archived mission packs, feature packsOn demand
How retrieval works:
  1. At session start, ADE loads Core + Hot memory automatically.
  2. The agent’s context stack is assembled from the relevant packs (Cold tier).
  3. During a session, MCP tool calls can fetch additional Cold-tier context on demand.
  4. At session end, significant facts from the session are written back into Hot memory (SQLite), and the relevant pack is queued for refresh.

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Troubleshooting

The Job Engine processes pack refreshes asynchronously. In normal operation, a pack refresh completes within 10–30 seconds of the triggering event. If a pack is still stale after a minute:
  1. Check that the Job Engine is running: Settings → Debug → Job Engine Status. If it is paused or erroring, restart it.
  2. Force a manual refresh from the Context view or with ⌘⇧R in the lane panel.
  3. If refresh fails repeatedly, check View → Developer Tools → Console for error output.
If an agent is acting on stale information, the most likely cause is that it received a stale pack at session start.
  1. Check the pack’s freshness badge — if it was stale when the session started, the agent had stale context.
  2. Force-refresh the relevant pack, then start a new chat session. The new session will pick up the refreshed pack.
  3. If the pack seems correct but the agent is still confused, the issue may be Hot-tier SQLite state. Try Settings → Debug → Clear Hot Memory (does not delete packs or commits, only clears the recent-sessions index).
The Project Pack is generated on first project open and after each significant event. If it is missing:
  1. Navigate to the Context view and click Generate Project Pack.
  2. If generation fails, ADE needs read access to your full repository — confirm there are no permission issues with .ade/artifacts/packs/project/.
  3. For monorepos with very large file trees, initial generation may take up to 2 minutes. Check Settings → Debug → Job Engine for the running job.
Pack history files are pruned based on the retention setting. Default is 30 days.
  1. Check the current setting in Settings → Context → Pack History Retention.
  2. Increase the retention period if you need longer history.
  3. Note that individual mission packs are retained independently of the standard retention policy — mission packs are kept as long as the mission record exists in the database.