Guides
How Jinion works
What Jinion puts in front of the model: its system prompt, your project's instructions, memory, modes and tools.
Each message you send goes to the model together with what Jinion knows about you and your project. The model then works in steps: it reads files, runs commands and edits code through Jinion's tools, until the task is done or it needs you.
What the model sees
| Part | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| System prompt | Written by Jinion: how to work, what to ask you before, which tools to use, git, how to talk to you |
| Environment | The folder it works in, its git branch or the repositories in it, your platform, and the date. In a worktree, that folder is the worktree |
| Project instructions | AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md in the folder you started Jinion in. See Write project instructions |
| Memory | An index of the notes the agent keeps, one line each. See Use memory |
| Skills and MCP tools | Listed by name, loaded only when used. See Use skills and MCP servers |
| The conversation | Your messages, the agent's replies, and what the tools returned |
Nothing else goes in: Jinion keeps its own settings, and doesn't load other tools' settings files, hooks or global
instructions such as ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. To bring over the memory, skills and MCP servers you set up elsewhere, see
Bring your Claude Code setup over.
Tools
The agent works through tools, and each call shows as a line in the conversation:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Read, Glob, Grep | Read files and search the project |
| Edit, Write | Change files; each change shows as a diff |
| Bash | Run commands, in the foreground or the background |
| Web fetch and search | Read pages and search the web; each shows what came back |
| Agent | Hand part of the work to a subagent, shown as a live tree |
| Ask | Ask you a question with options |
| Todo | Keep a task list you can follow |
| Remember, Recall, Forget | Save, read and drop memory notes |
Who decides what runs
Reads always run. What else runs without asking depends on the permission mode you pick. On top of every mode, Jinion itself asks before a commit, unless you turn that off, and before anything changes outside your project. Full access is the one mode that asks nothing at all.
Where your data lives
Conversations, memory, settings, worktrees and logs live in ~/.jinion on your machine. See The ~/.jinion folder.