Querying Context

Lerim provides several ways to search and retrieve context. All query paths are read-only.

Agent startup context

If you want an agent to use Lerim as project context and memory when past work may matter, follow Agent Startup Context. That guide covers installing the skill, adding a short AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md instruction, and verifying lerim context-brief show plus lerim working-memory show.

Start with lerim answer

The main query interface is lerim answer. It queries the shared context DB and returns a synthesized answer grounded in retrieved records.

lerim answer -- LLM-powered Q&A

The primary query interface. Sends your question through the context answerer with retrieved context records.

Requires running server

lerim answer is a service command that requires lerim up or lerim serve to be running.

Basic query

lerim answer "What sources supported our last competitor-pricing assumption?"

The answer flow retrieves relevant records, uses them as context, and returns a natural language answer with evidence of which records were consulted.

Flag	Default	Description
question	required	Your question (quote if it contains spaces)
--scope	all	Read scope: all projects or one project
--project	--	Project name/path when --scope=project

JSON output

Get structured output for scripting or agent integration:

lerim answer "How is the database configured?" --json

Returns JSON with answer metadata (for example: agent_session_id, error, and cost_usd).

Inspect raw state when needed

If you need raw local state instead of a synthesized answer:

• Use lerim status for project stream health, queue state, and record counts.
• Use lerim query for deterministic record/version/session counts and lists.
• Use lerim queue or lerim unscoped for session-ingestion debugging.
• Inspect the underlying context store directly only as a last-resort local debugging step. Raw storage access is not the primary agent-facing query path.

Tips for effective queries

Be specific

# Good -- specific topic
lerim answer "What authentication pattern does the API use?"

# Less effective -- too broad
lerim answer "How does auth work?"

Reference past decisions

lerim answer "Why did we switch from REST to gRPC for the internal API?"
lerim answer "What problems did we have with the original caching approach?"

Check before implementing

After reading Context Brief and Working Memory, ask Lerim for the topic you care about. If you need a synthesized answer across multiple records, use lerim answer:

lerim answer "What evidence supports the latest compliance decision?"