The three-layer split makes a lot of sense. I’ve hit this with agents too — session notes pile up fast, but the decisions that matter are usually the “why”.
Exactly. Session memory grows quickly because almost everything can feel useful in the moment, but only a small part of it deserves to survive as durable project knowledge.
For me, the interesting part is deciding what gets promoted into the why layer - and preserving the reason, not just the outcome.
If you run into this regularly, I'd be very interested in your feedback on Keep the Why. It's built specifically around that distinction:
https://keepthewhy.com