12.2 Importing from a journal ¶

Goal: hand the teach subcommand a multi-thousand-word document and let it extract durable facts.

Suppose my-journal.txt contains 30 KB of personal notes (travel, projects, family events, books read, etc.).

Step 1: dry-run, write to file for review.

ownsona teach my-journal.txt --subject Blake --output review.json

Open review.json in an editor. You’ll see a JSON array of facts in third-person. Cull anything that’s:

• Already in the store (re-runs of teach won’t double-up thanks to skip_if_near dedup, but reviewing keeps the import clean).
• Time-sensitive and unlikely to stay true.
• Phrased awkwardly — edit in place.
• Plain wrong (the LLM occasionally misreads context).

Step 2: commit via import.

ownsona import review.json --dedup skip_if_near

You’ll see a summary like inserted=42 duplicates=3 errors=0 (total=45). The 3 duplicates are facts that already existed; nothing got double-stored.

Step 3: spot-check.

ownsona query "<something that should now be remembered>"

The new fact should be the top hit.