Dashboard/PRISM (Second-Brain)/wiki/decisions/2026-06-30-cassandra-naming-and-persona.md
PRISM (Second-Brain)

wiki/decisions/2026-06-30-cassandra-naming-and-persona.md

ADR: Cassandra is the only name; portrait + session hygiene

Date: 2026-06-30 Status: Accepted

Context

The sales-coach agent had two names in use: the full "Cassandra" and the nickname "Cass". The user wants one name everywhere. The agent also needed a face for the web chat and Telegram, and the session store had accumulated dozens of throwaway test conversations.

Decision

  1. Rename "Cass" to "Cassandra" everywhere, including SOUL.md and AGENTS.md (0 standalone "Cass" left).
  2. Give her a portrait: generated on the VPS with Imagen 4 on the paid Gemini key, candidate cass-2 picked. Deployed as the SPA chat avatar and prepared for Telegram.
  3. Turn on session auto-pruning: sessions.auto_prune: true, retention_days: 7, vacuum after prune.

Rationale

One name reads as a real person, not a system with aliases. Imagen 4 was already available on the box key, so the portrait needed no new service. auto_prune is Hermes' own built-in housekeeping, so no custom cron is needed. 7 days is short enough to keep test spam from piling up before a demo.

Alternatives Considered

Option Why rejected
Keep "Cass" as a nickname User wants the name singular; nickname read as inconsistent
Set Telegram avatar via Bot API Telegram has no Bot API method for a bot's own photo; must use @BotFather (manual)
Custom cron to prune sessions Hermes ships sessions.auto_prune; use the built-in
Leave old sessions They carried the old "Cass" baked prompt and cluttered the store

Consequences

  • SOUL.md and AGENTS.md on the VPS rewritten to "Cassandra" (backed up first).
  • Hermes snapshots SOUL.md into sessions.system_prompt at conversation creation, so live sessions keep the old name until the session is deleted. All existing sessions were wiped to apply the rename (and clear test spam); next message per channel starts fresh.
  • Portrait: SPA avatar live (round 40px in the chat header, /assets/cassandra.png). Telegram is a manual one-time @BotFather upload (file prepared at 640x360). See memory reference-vps-image-gen-imagen-telegram-avatar.
  • Persona design rule unchanged from 2026-06-29: pure traits in SOUL, no scripted lines. Grounding gate from 2026-06-28-grounded-report-qa-gate still governs facts.
  • Related entities: cassandra, hermes.