Session recall lets you query your session history by time window, topic keyword, or structural overlap between sessions. Use it to reload context from past work, find when you last explored a topic, or discover which sessions share a knowledge thread.

All three recall modes are available as CLI commands (ztlctl session recall-*) and as MCP tools for agent workflows.

Temporal recall¶

Temporal recall returns sessions filtered by a date range. Each session in the result includes its ID, topic, status, start and end timestamps, log entry count, and the IDs of notes created during the session.

$ ztlctl session recall-temporal --from-date 2026-01-01 --to-date 2026-03-31

Both flags are optional. Omit --from-date for no lower bound; omit --to-date for no upper bound. Omit both to return all sessions ordered by most recent first.

# All sessions from the past week
$ ztlctl session recall-temporal --from-date 2026-03-14

# All sessions ever (no date filter)
$ ztlctl session recall-temporal

Options:

Result fields per session:

Topic recall¶

Topic recall searches session log entries by text and returns all sessions that contain matching entries. The search is case-insensitive and uses substring matching against the summary field of each log entry.

$ ztlctl session recall-topic "authentication"

The query argument is required and must be non-empty.

# Find sessions where authentication was discussed
$ ztlctl session recall-topic "authentication"

# Find sessions involving graph refactoring work
$ ztlctl session recall-topic "graph refactor"

Arguments:

Result fields per session:

Topology recall¶

Topology recall finds pairs of sessions that share referenced notes or shared tags. It measures structural overlap between sessions rather than date or keyword, making it useful for discovering related work streams across different time periods.

$ ztlctl session recall-topology

By default, the top 10 most-overlapping pairs are returned. Use --limit to change this.

# Top 20 most-connected session pairs
$ ztlctl session recall-topology --limit 20

Options:

Result fields per pair:

Pairs are ranked by total shared items (shared_notes + shared_tags) descending. Pairs with no shared content are excluded.

MCP tools¶

All three recall modes are available as MCP tools. Use these in agent workflows where you need structured session history data.

recall_temporal parameters:

recall_topic parameters:

recall_topology parameters:

MCP resource: ztlctl://sessions/recent¶

The ztlctl://sessions/recent resource returns the last 5 sessions in a single read. This is the fastest way to get recent session context at the start of an agent workflow.

{
  "sessions": [
    {
      "session_id": "LOG-0003",
      "topic": "Graph engine refactoring",
      "status": "closed",
      "started": "2026-03-20T14:00:00",
      "ended": "2026-03-20T16:30:00",
      "log_entry_count": 12,
      "note_ids": ["ZTL-0042", "ZTL-0043"]
    }
  ],
  "count": 1
}

Read this resource at the start of any session-based workflow before calling session start or session context.

Agent workflow example¶

Scenario: An agent is beginning a new work session on a topic it worked on previously. It wants to load relevant context from prior sessions before starting.

Step 1 — Read recent sessions resource:

resource: ztlctl://sessions/recent

The agent inspects the last 5 sessions and identifies a relevant session ID (LOG-0005).

Step 2 — Use temporal recall to retrieve the full week's sessions:

tool: recall_temporal
args: { "from_date": "2026-03-14" }

The agent scans the result for sessions with note_ids that are worth loading before continuing.

Step 3 — Use topic recall to find older sessions on the same topic:

tool: recall_topic
args: { "query": "graph engine" }

The agent finds two older sessions with matching log entries and extracts the note_ids from each. It then fetches those notes using get_document to build a comprehensive context before creating new content.

Step 4 — Start the new session:

tool: start
args: { "topic": "Graph engine refactoring — part 2" }

Configuration¶

Session recall does not have dedicated configuration options. It reads from the session log data written by session start, session log, and session close commands.

To ensure good recall coverage, log work entries during active sessions:

$ ztlctl session log "Refactored graph proximity scoring for BM25 pipeline"
$ ztlctl session log "Reviewed ZTL-0042 — updating maturity to evergreen"

The richer the log, the more precise recall_topic results will be.

What's next¶

• Agentic Workflows — orchestration patterns that use session recall for context assembly
• Core Concepts — how sessions fit into the zettelkasten lifecycle
• Command Reference — complete CLI reference for all session commands