From 8b7b34f7572ff0b8ab684577d033b8804f09c912 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: ARIA <aria@myagent>
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2026 10:06:09 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] ARIA self-improvement: smart truncation for temporal
 summaries
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Daily and weekly summaries in working-memory previously cut off at a hard
char count, often mid-word. Replace with smartTruncate(): prefer the last
sentence boundary (. ! ?) within the budget, fall back to last whitespace,
then hard cap. Boundary must lie within 60% of the budget to avoid losing
most of the content to a stray early period.

Same char budgets (200 daily / 300 weekly) — just smarter cutoff.

Intent-summary: Recent-days/Recent-weeks summaries truncated mid-word, costing parse-effort on every reflect tick.
Intent-tokens: truncation, midword, summary, boundary, readability, temporal

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 backend/memory/working-memory.ts | 39 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 35 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/backend/memory/working-memory.ts b/backend/memory/working-memory.ts
index 119e58fd..6102c0b5 100644
--- a/backend/memory/working-memory.ts
+++ b/backend/memory/working-memory.ts
@@ -249,6 +249,37 @@ export function updateConversationThreads(wm: WorkingMemory, observations: Obser
 const MAX_DAILY_SUMMARIES = 14;   // Keep 2 weeks of daily summaries
 const MAX_WEEKLY_SUMMARIES = 12;  // Keep 3 months of weekly summaries
 
+// Boundary must lie within this fraction of the budget; otherwise we'd risk
+// dropping most of the content for a stray early period.
+const TRUNCATE_BOUNDARY_FLOOR = 0.6;
+
+/**
+ * Truncate `text` to at most `maxLen` chars, preferring a clean cutoff:
+ *   1. last sentence terminator (. ! ?) within budget
+ *   2. last whitespace within budget
+ *   3. hard char cap
+ */
+function smartTruncate(text: string, maxLen: number): string {
+  if (text.length <= maxLen) return text;
+  const slice = text.slice(0, maxLen);
+  const floor = Math.floor(maxLen * TRUNCATE_BOUNDARY_FLOOR);
+
+  let lastSentence = -1;
+  for (let i = slice.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
+    const c = slice.charCodeAt(i);
+    if (c === 46 /* . */ || c === 33 /* ! */ || c === 63 /* ? */) {
+      lastSentence = i;
+      break;
+    }
+  }
+  if (lastSentence >= floor) return slice.slice(0, lastSentence + 1);
+
+  const lastSpace = slice.lastIndexOf(" ");
+  if (lastSpace >= floor) return slice.slice(0, lastSpace);
+
+  return slice;
+}
+
 /** Get the Monday of the week containing the given date (ISO week) */
 function getWeekStart(date: Date): string {
   const d = new Date(date);
@@ -268,9 +299,9 @@ export function updateDailySummary(wm: WorkingMemory): void {
   }
 
   const today = wm.temporal?.date || new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10);
-  // Compress currentContext to a one-liner (first 200 chars)
+  // Compress currentContext to a one-liner, capped at 200 chars (prefer clean cutoff).
   if (wm.currentContext) {
-    wm.temporalSummaries.daily[today] = wm.currentContext.slice(0, 200);
+    wm.temporalSummaries.daily[today] = smartTruncate(wm.currentContext, 200);
   }
 
   // Prune old daily summaries beyond retention window
@@ -307,8 +338,8 @@ export function compileWeeklySummary(wm: WorkingMemory): void {
   // Create weekly summaries for completed weeks
   for (const [weekStart, dailies] of pastWeekDays) {
     if (wm.temporalSummaries.weekly[weekStart]) continue; // already compiled
-    // Combine daily summaries, truncate to 300 chars
-    wm.temporalSummaries.weekly[weekStart] = dailies.join(" | ").slice(0, 300);
+    // Combine daily summaries, capped at 300 chars (prefer clean cutoff).
+    wm.temporalSummaries.weekly[weekStart] = smartTruncate(dailies.join(" | "), 300);
   }
 
   // Prune old weekly summaries