Jeff separates configuration, user data, cache data, and secrets.

Purpose Default location Notes
Configuration $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/jeff or ~/.config/jeff config.json, menu.json, completions, and template packages.
Durable user data $XDG_DATA_HOME/jeff or ~/.local/share/jeff Finance and banking records belong here.
Cache data $XDG_CACHE_HOME/jeff or ~/.cache/jeff Rebuildable downloads, indexes, and temporary runtime caches.
Secrets Vaultline store jeff API keys, banking credentials, tokens, and other secrets.

Runtime code must not depend on tmp/, and generated build artifacts must remain under work/ or dist/.

Agent Data

Jeff’s personal-agent state lives below the durable user data directory:

memcastle/   Persistent memory castle, system prompt, wings, rooms, and logbook.
skills/      User skills and skill metadata. Secret values live in Vaultline.
commands/    Bash-backed commands executed with `jeff execute <name>`.
reports/     Generated daily, finance, API, and operational reports.

Jeff writes Codex-backed chat semaphores below memcastle/state/sessions/. These local files record whether the Jeff preprompt was already injected for a bound chat session.

Use jeff memcastle info to inspect the memory castle structure, jeff memcastle search for offline text search, jeff memcastle ask for Codex-backed answers constrained to memory castle sources, and jeff memcastle cleanup to ask Jeff to sort unsorted gatehouse/ material into the castle. Top-level directories below memcastle/ are wings. Nested directories are topic areas, and Markdown files are rooms or focused notes.

Jeff’s encrypted Vaultline store lives below memcastle/jeff/vaultline/store/. Jeff registers that external store with the running Vaultline daemon, keeps the jeff store’s unseal material in config.json, and passes it transiently when the store has to be opened. The encrypted store files (*.vlx and related Vaultline metadata) are treated as binary data by memory-castle search and ask workflows.

Stored commands use this layout:

commands/
  shared/*.sh
  <name>/
    init.sh
    run.sh
    cleanup.sh
    files/

jeff execute <name> runs in Bash, sources commands/shared/*.sh, sources init.sh, runs run.sh, and then sources cleanup.sh through an exit trap when present.

Migrations

Jeff records configuration migration state in config.json as schema_version. The Debian package runs jeff migrate --quiet for the installing sudo user when possible, and the CLI also applies pending migrations on startup.

The first migration moves legacy durable finance and banking data from the config directory to the XDG data directory when paths such as finance/, finance.json, banking/, or banking.json already exist under ~/.config/jeff.