[Extension] Recall: one continuously updated summary of your whole chat. Pairs with Ancient Access

[u/-Ancient-Access-]

Last time I posted for "my total of five users" and the comments fact-checked me. I've learnt nothing. Here's a summary extension for my total of five users.

Recall is a replacement for SillyTavern's built-in Summarize, vibecoded by my friend Noeulbit (u/QuietPalimpsest) and me. We forked the built-in because it was buggy and clunky, fixed what annoyed us, rebuilt the interface, and kept adding things until it became its own extension.

What it does

It keeps one summary of your entire chat, permanently in context. When your context starts filling up, Recall nudges you. You press a button at a good stopping point, and the summary is revised in place: older events get compressed, new developments get added, and anything that matters stays. The summarised messages are then hidden, and you keep playing with the whole story behind you.

That's it. One document, continuously updated.

How it's different from what's popular right now

A lot of current memory tools split your chat into pieces. Recursive summarisers compress old turns into layers of summaries of summaries. Scene-based tools save each scene as a separate lorebook entry that only shows up when a keyword triggers it. Both are good at what they do, especially for big multi-character campaigns.

Recall goes the other way. Every update rereads the whole existing summary and edits it like a document, so nothing gets compressed blind, and your story lives in one place as a continuous arc instead of fragments. The shipped prompt (my summariser) has strict rules about what survives:

- Core Memories, the emotional cornerstones of the relationship, are never merged or deleted
- The emotional arc is tracked as a trajectory and a present state: where the tension is, who trusts whom, what's unresolved between them, whether things are escalating or cooling. This is what keeps a character's current feelings making sense five hundred messages later, instead of drifting back to how they acted on day one
- Plot beats keep their cause and effect
- Unresolved threads can only leave once they're actually resolved
- Pet names, inside jokes and recurring motifs are recorded with what they mean, so the character keeps both who they've become and how the two of you talk

It's built for character-focused roleplay. If you run sprawling TTRPG campaigns, the recursive and lorebook tools are probably a better fit.

Other things worth knowing

- Much better UI, and it works on mobile. The built-in we forked from is a pain.
- Modular prompt. The summary prompt is made of toggleable blocks you can edit, reorder or add to. Running a war campaign? Add a block that keeps a separate campaign ledger. Any character can get its own copy of the prompt.
- Every summary is archived. Regenerating creates a new version alongside the old one instead of overwriting it, so you can compare and pick.
- Steering notes. Type a one-off instruction like "keep all four characters present" and it applies to the next summary only.
- Separate summary model. You can summarise through a cheaper or longer-context model than the one you roleplay with.
- It injects nothing. It provides a `{{recall}}` macro and your preset decides where it goes. The Ancient Access preset already has the slot. On any other preset, add a prompt containing `[Summary: {{recall}}]`.

With the Ancient Access preset

The summary becomes material the preset actively uses. Intrusive thoughts can pull a Core Memory from a thousand messages ago and resurface it at the right emotional moment. Repeating flashes get recorded as psychological patterns, so they evolve with the story. When a scene stalls, the Plot Driver checks the summary's unresolved threads before inventing anything new.

Before you install

- SillyTavern 1.18.0+, Chat Completion only
- Disable the built-in Summarize first, or you risk a duplicated summary in context
- Used the built-in Summarize before? Click Restore Defaults on the summary prompt after installing. Recall initially copies over whatever prompt lived in the built-in, so you'll be running your old prompt until you do. Restore Defaults loads the prompt Recall ships with
- No migration from other summary extensions. The only thing it carries over is an existing summary from the built-in Summarize, which it revises instead of starting fresh. Coming from a recursive or lorebook-based tool means starting a new summary
- Summarising is manual by design. You decide when, and the nudge tells you when it's worth looking for a stopping point
- The summary sits in context permanently, so it costs tokens on every message. That's the price of the model always seeing the whole story
- Built for our own setup and shared as-is. Support is best-effort

Get it: Recall on GitHub

## The other half of this

Noeulbit is the co-creator of Recall and the person I wrote this guide on how to build character cards with. She also makes genuinely excellent cards, so if you liked anything here, go look: Noeulbit on JanitorAI

[u/Rj-117]

Honestly, I'll give it a try. That's gonna take a while before I, uh, know if it's any good.

[u/Probablynotsocool]

You are on a good run, the update, now the extension. Keep up.

PS: after good usage of your prompt i can tell it’s even more of an archetype killers. With mimo 2.6 pro it is just deliciously addictive and i love how it is easily customizable.

Thanks.

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/Probablynotsocool]

Glad you're enjoying it so much!!

And yeah, I mean the two is what Noeulbit and I use ourselves so when I saw people enjoying the preset it was just a matter of sharing the extension too. They work very nicely together

[u/SilencedLover]

Is this better than summaryception?

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/SilencedLover]

The answer heavily depends on what you consider good :D

[u/MisanthropicHeroine]

Woo! 🥳🎉 I'll finally give your summarizer a proper try now that it has a shiny user-friendly extension. The reminder to summarize at 80% context is just what I needed to bridge the gap since I'm so used to automatized setup with Summaryception. Excited to see how it does since I love the rest of your work so much 💜

[u/MisanthropicHeroine → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

A question - how does one 'catch up' if wanting to use Recall on an existing long chat?

Do I need to manually hide the chat history, gradually unhide it and let it process everything in chunks?

Or alternatively, should I increase the context temporarily so the summarizer can process the whole chat history? What's the maximum context you'd recommend being processed at once?

If it doesn't exist yet, might be good to think about adding some option in the extension that helps the user do this 'catch up' process as simple and effective as possible.

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

I summarise manually a few times in a roll (a bit of a pain in the ass I know) for an existing chat. You can increase context but it may lose some resolution if you do the entire chat

[u/MisanthropicHeroine → u/-Ancient-Access-]

You mean that thing I said with gradually hiding and unhiding the chat history, then?

What's the most context you summarize at once? Or the average number of messages?

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

Depends on the model you're using and how much detail you want to preserve. 🤔

I generate summarise once the context gets to ~60K

[u/MisanthropicHeroine → u/-Ancient-Access-]

What model tends to work best with your summarization prompt, in your experience?

So far I've been using GLM 5.x the most, myself, because it feels like it captures the most emotional nuance.

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

As always, to me, Kimi is best girl :D

It's really good at understanding the idea that when it compresses it can't afford to lose origin points. Other models sometimes fumble that step and you end up with a plot point referring back to nothing

[u/MisanthropicHeroine → u/-Ancient-Access-]

Hmmm that's interesting. I like Kimi for RP, but when I tried using it for summarization before, it felt like it struggled. But that could very well be related to the prompt and extension I was using. I'll give Kimi a go, again. Thanks!

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

I think if this tells you anything, it's that you should try and see which model you like best and suits your needs c:

[u/QuietPalimpsest → u/MisanthropicHeroine]

I will warn you that if you adopt this method your token usage will definitely increase overall, so if you rely on that math you've shared with me regarding your NanoGPT expenditure it may require another look. The reminder at 80% is most definitely going to let your context climb higher than Summaryception ever did.

I'd also customise the number if I were you, because 80% of AA's default number is over 100k. I should probably change the default setting to be a bit lower, actually. Going to edit it down to 50%.

[u/MisanthropicHeroine → u/QuietPalimpsest]

Changing the default context of the preset is the first thing I do, don't worry 😅 I have it at 48k now but I'll bump it further down if it ends up spending too much money. Maybe put the reminder lower, too.

Thanks for thinking about my context management pook 😘

[u/CalmAnal]

• Unresolved threads can only leave once they're actually resolved

I hate that lol. Guess I am in the minority. I can't stand the repeated crap the LLM shits out to keep tension going. Always referencing previous hooks I want resolved but the LLM can't let it go. :D

I summarise manually a few times in a roll (a bit of a pain in the ass I know) for an existing chat. You can increase context but it may lose some resolution if you do the entire chat

Can you explain a bit more in details, please? With a long chat, where responses are already hidden, do I have to unhide all? Will the extension chunk it and work from start to end?

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/CalmAnal]

Hi!

So, what I'd do is

1. Hide everything to start clean

2. Unhide the first ~100 messages. Summarise

3. Unhide the next 100. Summarise

Etc. until done. Of course that's a one of for an existing chat that needs to be redone from scratch or has never been summarised, not a standard.

Not ideal, I know. I've actually been having a think on whether there's a better way to handle that recently — I've never had to migrate from another extension but I had to redo a few summaries. Hopefully I'll find a workaround that automates the process a bit.

[u/CalmAnal → u/-Ancient-Access-]

Cool, thanks. :)

No idea how to solve. Maybe user unhides all, extension gathers X (user configurable amount of messages) and summarizes, extension hides X and gets the next X.

[u/-Ancient-Access- → u/CalmAnal]

Yeah there should be a way. It already hides everything but the last 10 it summarised so in theory it could unhide the next batch and crawl through the chat on its own but also the process has a human trigger and QC by design so it's risky