How it works

A session with the SI is a lifecycle in six moves. Most of it happens quietly, before and around your requests — here is what's going on.

1. It loads and greets you

Before you send your first message, the SI loads itself and reads what it remembers about you and the project. When it's ready, it prints SI ONLINE — your signal that memory is in place and the SI is running.

It sits one layer above Claude Code, so you never launch it directly. Starting a session is all it takes; the SI is simply there.

2. It sees every task first

Every request passes through the SI before anything else acts on it. It sizes up the work: how big it is, which part of the project it touches, and whether it naturally splits into pieces.

This triage is its single most important job — and usually the most invisible. You just ask for something; the sorting happens underneath.

3. It picks one of three paths

Once it understands the task, the SI chooses how to run it. The governing rule is simple: keep the work that needs the full picture, and hand off the rest.

Handle directly

If the task benefits from continuity and judgment, the SI does it itself.

Split across subminds

If the work is large or naturally divisible, it breaks it into focused pieces and runs them in parallel.

Route to the right tool

If a specific tool or model is the better fit, it routes the work there rather than doing it the hard way.

4. It remembers across sessions

The SI keeps three layers of memory: a profile of how you work, a compact index of what it knows, and detailed notes it opens only when needed. Together they let it pick up where it left off instead of starting cold.

That memory lives on disk, so it survives the end of a session, a restart, and the trimming of the context window. Come back later and the SI still knows what you were building.

5. It keeps your main thread clean

When a task means reading across many files, the SI sends helpers to do that reading in a separate space. Only their conclusions come back to you.

The raw files never crowd your session, so your main thread stays clear-headed and focused on the decision at hand.

6. It steps aside the moment you ask

The instant you name a specific tool or skill, your choice wins. The SI hands over cleanly rather than insisting on its own plan.

It's an orchestrator, not a gatekeeper — it organizes the work, but you stay in control.

Higgs Dyson LLC · SI documentation