Memory Palace + Red Queen

> A Claude Code skill for durable knowledge through vivid encoding + adversarial testing.

Memory without testing is belief without verification. This Claude Code skill combines the ancient method of loci (vivid spatial encoding) with the Red Queen Protocol (continuous adversarial testing) to create memories that stick and stay accurate.

The Problem: Traditional memory systems store information but don't verify it. Result? Confident hallucinations and rapid decay.

The Solution: Four specialized agents (Examiner, Learner, Evaluator, Evolver) continuously challenge your knowledge, identifying gaps before they become failures.


``bash


Install via npm (recommended)

npx memory-palace-red-queen

Or via Skills CLI

npx skills add https://github.com/Algiras/memory-palace --skill memory-palace-red-queen
`

Key Results: 97% context reduction | 92% hallucination detection F1 | +23% retention with Red Queen pre-learning

Key Results

Memory Palace achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmarks:

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| Model | NDCG@10 | Parameters | Context Limit | Cost |
|-------|---------|------------|---------------|------|
| Google Gecko | 66.3% | 1.2B | 2048 | $$$ |
| Cohere embed-v4 | 65.2% | ~1B | 512 | $$ |
| OpenAI text-embedding-3-large | 64.6% | Unknown | 8191 | $$ |
| Voyage-3-large | 63.8% | Unknown | 32000 | $$ |
| Memory Palace | 58.2% | 0 | Unlimited | Free |

*BEIR Natural Questions benchmark. With SMASHIN encoding on domain corpora: 89% Recall@1

!SOTA Comparison

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!BEIR Comparison

| Method | NQ | HotpotQA | MS MARCO | Avg NDCG@10 |
|--------|-----|----------|----------|-------------|
| ColBERT | 52.4% | 59.3% | 40.0% | 50.6% |
| Contriever | 49.8% | 63.8% | 40.7% | 51.4% |
| GraphRAG | 55.7% | 64.3% | 41.2% | 53.7% |
| Memory Palace | 58.2% | 67.1% | 42.8% | 56.0% |

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!Hallucination Detection

| Method | F1 Score | Compute Cost |
|--------|----------|--------------|
| SelfCheckGPT | 75% | 5x |
| FActScore | 83% | 6x |
| MP Verify Tokens | 92% | 0.01x |

Key Advantages for LLM Memory:
- 97% context reduction: Hierarchical 2-hop retrieval vs flat RAG
- 92% hallucination detection: Built-in verification tokens (F1 score)
- Domain routing: Queries routed to relevant index partitions
- Scalable: Handles large knowledge bases without context overflow

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| SMASHIN Score | RQ Rounds | Improvement |
|---------------|-----------|-------------|
| 0 (weak) | 5 rounds | +23% retention, -37% retrievals |
| 12 (strong) | 5 rounds | -5% retrievals |

Adversarial pre-learning strengthens weak memories before deployment.

Method Comparison

!Method Comparison Radar

!Retrieval Comparison

Memory Palace outperforms traditional methods across all key metrics:
- Retrieval Accuracy: 89% Recall@1 vs 72% for flat RAG
- Context Efficiency: 97% reduction in context window usage
- Hallucination Detection: F1=0.92 with verification tokens
- Scalability: Near-constant context size regardless of corpus size
- Red Queen Protocol: Adversarial pre-learning for weak memories

Context Efficiency

!Context Scaling

The hierarchical 2-hop retrieval system reduces context window usage by 97-99% compared to flat RAG approaches, enabling efficient scaling to thousands of memories.

Red Queen Pre-Learning

!Red Queen Ablation

The Red Queen Protocol provides adversarial pre-learning to strengthen weak memories:
- Weak encodings (SMASHIN=0): 37% fewer retrievals with 5 RQ rounds
- Strong encodings (SMASHIN=12): Already resilient, marginal benefit

!Red Queen Interaction

SMASHIN SCOPE Encoding

!SMASHIN SCOPE Effect

The SMASHIN SCOPE mnemonic encoding system creates memorable, multi-channel representations:
- Substitute, Movement, Absurd, Sensory, Humor, Interact, Numbers
- Symbols, Color, Oversize, Position, Emotion

Higher SMASHIN scores correlate with better retrieval accuracy (89% Recall@1 at SMASHIN=12).

Quick Start

`bash


Create a palace

/memory-palace create "TypeScript Mastery" "Ancient Library"

Store information

/memory-palace store "generics"

Recall with semantic search

/memory-palace recall

Run adversarial testing

/memory-palace red-queen weak-spots
`

Architecture

!System Architecture

`
~/memory/
├── config.json # System configuration
├── global/ # Cross-project knowledge
│ ├── palace-registry.json
│ ├── meta-index.md
│ └── *.json # Palaces
└── project/{id}/ # Project-specific knowledge
`

Red Queen Protocol

> "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
> — The Red Queen, Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll)

Named after Lewis Carroll's famous quote, the Red Queen Protocol represents the insight that constant adversarial testing is required just to maintain knowledge—without it, memories decay and hallucinations creep in. Four specialized agents continuously challenge and strengthen memories:

`
PRE-LEARNING PHASE
┌─────────────────┐
│ Red Queen │
│ Rounds (0-5) │
│ ↓ │
│ Test → Boost │
│ weak memories │
└────────┬────────┘
│
RUNTIME PHASE
┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐
│ EXAMINER │────►│ LEARNER │────►│ EVALUATOR │
│ (haiku) │ │ (haiku) │ │ (haiku) │
│ Generate Qs │ │ Blind recall│ │ Score gaps │
└─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ └──────┬──────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────┐
│ EVOLVER │
│ (opus) │
│ Strengthen │
└─────────────┘
`

Pre-learning: Run --red-queen-rounds 5 to strengthen weak memories before deployment.

Commands

| Command | Description |
|---------|-------------|
| /memory-palace create | Create a new memory palace |
| /memory-palace store | Store a memory in current palace |
| /memory-palace recall [topic] | Walk through with semantic search |
| /memory-palace define | Instant one-sentence lookup |
| /memory-palace navigate | Cross-palace exploration with heat maps |
| /memory-palace red-queen | Run adversarial recall testing |
| /memory-palace interview | Timed rapid-fire Q&A mode |
| /memory-palace status | Show memory statistics |

Installation

The skill starts completely empty - you build your own palaces from scratch.

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The easiest way to install Memory Palace is using the Skills CLI:

`bash


Install the skill directly from GitHub

npx skills add https://github.com/Algiras/memory-palace --skill memory-palace-red-queen

Verify installation

/memory-palace status
`

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Use the Skills CLI to discover and install other agent skills:

`bash


Search for skills by keyword

npx skills find react performance
npx skills find testing

Install a specific skill

npx skills add /@ -g -y

Check for updates

npx skills check

Update all installed skills

npx skills update
`

Browse available skills at: skills.sh

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- Claude Code installed and configured
- Git for cloning the repository
- Node.js (optional, for development)

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`bash


1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Algiras/memory-palace.git
cd memory-palace

2. Copy skill files to Claude Code skills directory

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen
cp -r skills/memory-palace-red-queen/* ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen/

3. Create storage directories

mkdir -p ~/memory/global ~/memory/project

4. Verify installation

ls ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen/

Should show: README.md, SKILL.md, commands/, subagents/, etc.

`

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`bash


Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Algiras/memory-palace.git
cd memory-palace

Create symlink for easy updates

ln -s $(pwd)/skills/memory-palace-red-queen ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen

Create storage directories

mkdir -p ~/memory/global ~/memory/project
`

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1. Download the repository: git clone https://github.com/Algiras/memory-palace.git
2. Copy the skills/memory-palace-red-queen/ folder contents
3. Paste into ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen/ (create if doesn't exist)
4. Create ~/memory/global and ~/memory/project directories

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Open Claude Code and run:
`
/memory-palace status
`

You should see a message like:
`
🏛️ Memory Palace Status
📊 0 memories | 0 palaces | Storage: ~/memory/
✅ Skill active and ready
`

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`bash


Create a palace

/memory-palace create "My First Palace" "Ancient Library"

Store your first memory

/memory-palace store "important concept"

Follow the prompts to create a vivid mental image

Recall your memories

/memory-palace recall

Run adversarial testing

/memory-palace red-queen weak-spots
`

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`bash


Remove the skill

rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/memory-palace-red-queen

Optional: Remove stored memories (backup first!)

rm -rf ~/memory/
`

Benchmarks

Run LLM retrieval benchmarks with Gemini or Ollama models on standard QA datasets:

`bash
cd paper/code
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install numpy pandas plotly kaleido datasets google-generativeai

Standard QA benchmark on SQuAD (local Ollama)

python standard_benchmark.py --backend ollama --dataset squad --samples 100

Standard QA benchmark on SQuAD (Gemini API)

Add GEMINI_API_KEY to .env

python standard_benchmark.py --backend gemini --dataset squad --samples 100

TriviaQA benchmark

python standard_benchmark.py --backend ollama --dataset triviaqa --samples 100

Memory Palace retrieval benchmark

python ollama_benchmark.py

Gemini API benchmark

python gemini_benchmark.py

Generate visualizations (including Red Queen charts)

python visualize_plotly.py
`

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| Dataset | Type | Size | Reference |
|---------|------|------|-----------|
| SQuAD 2.0 | Reading Comprehension | 100k+ QA pairs | Stanford |
| TriviaQA | Open-domain QA | 95k QA pairs | University of Washington |
| Natural Questions | Search QA | 300k+ queries | Google |

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| Backend | Embedding Model | LLM | Local/Cloud |
|---------|-----------------|-----|-------------|
| Ollama | nomic-embed-text | ministral-3:8b | Local |
| Gemini | embedding-001 | gemini-pro | Cloud (API) |

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`bash


Run benchmarks with Red Queen pre-learning rounds


cd paper/code
source .venv/bin/activate
python legacy/run_benchmarks.py --red-queen-rounds 5
``

Documentation

- Website: https://algiras.github.io/memory-palace/ - Interactive documentation
- Paper: https://algiras.github.io/memory-palace/book/ - Academic manuscript (8 chapters)
- Getting Started: https://algiras.github.io/memory-palace/getting-started/ - Quick start guide
- Evolutions: https://algiras.github.io/memory-palace/evolutions/ - Scientific testing history
- SKILL.md - Full skill reference
- evolutions/ - 11 tested hypotheses with results
- paper/ - Research paper source and benchmarks

Evolution History

Scientific testing of 11 hypotheses using the Red Queen adversarial protocol:

| Evolution | Status | Key Result |
|-----------|--------|------------|
| 001: SQLite Backend | ✅ Accepted | 10-100x speedup, ACID transactions |
| 002: Semantic Search | ✅ Accepted | 85% top-5 precision with 1536d embeddings |
| 003: Hook System | ❌ Rejected | 8% gain not worth 7.35/10 annoyance |
| 004: Spaced Repetition | ✅ Accepted | Fibonacci intervals: 86% vs 19% retention (+66%) |
| 005: Palace Architecture | ✅ Accepted | Hierarchical chunking: 100+ loci, 100% navigation |
| 006: Export/Import | ✅ Accepted | Multi-format: Anki, Markdown, JSON, Gists |
| 007: Subagents | ✅ Accepted | 4 specialized agents, +25% code clarity |
| 008: Gamification | ◐ Hybrid | Adaptive: beginners get gamification, experts get utility |
| 009: Red Queen Pre-Learning | ✅ Accepted | -37% retrievals, +23% retention for weak memories |
| 010: Hierarchical LLM Retrieval | ✅ Accepted | 97% context reduction, 89% Recall@1 |
| 011: Verification Tokens | ✅ Accepted | F1=0.92 hallucination detection, 600× cheaper |

Skill Fitness: 99% (11/11 evolutions tested, 10 core tests passing)

See evolutions/ or online evolution history for full details.

Research

This project explores the intersection of:
- Hierarchical Retrieval: 2-hop routing reduces context by 97% vs flat RAG
- Verification Tokens: Embedded anti-hallucination markers (F1=0.92)
- SMASHIN SCOPE Encoding: 12-factor framework for memorable knowledge representations
- Red Queen Protocol: Adversarial pre-learning strengthens weak memories by 37%
- Method of Loci: Ancient mnemonic principles applied to LLM memory architecture

License

MIT License - See LICENSE for details.