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Memory is what your teammates know without being told: how your team wants work done, decisions, pitfalls and who is who. Teammates write it themselves when a thread goes quiet, and you can read and edit every line.

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Three memories

Each thread loads three memories: Thread summaries are memory too. A short summary of each thread is written when it goes quiet, and teammates find summaries with search. They aren’t loaded into threads.

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Core and topics

Each memory has a core and topics:
  • The core is a short list of lines every thread loads before it starts. It holds what nearly every thread needs: how the team wants work done, and pitfalls that can do harm, such as an App that reaches a live account.
  • Topics are named groups of lines, each with a line saying when to read it (“Read when changing billing”). A teammate sees the list of topics and reads one before work it bears on, the way it reads a skill.
This keeps what each thread loads small however much your team learns.

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How memory is written

When a thread has been quiet for a few minutes, a short run reads what was said since the last time and updates memory. It can:
  • Add a line, in the core or under a topic. Most threads add nothing, and at most 3 lines per memory.
  • Replace a line the conversation corrected. The old text goes to the archive.
  • Remove a line the conversation showed is wrong, outdated or said twice, with a reason.
  • Confirm a line the conversation relied on and showed still holds. Its date moves to today.
The run leaves out what was done in the thread (the summary keeps that), what Apps or the code already show, the contents of emails and websites a teammate read, details about people outside your team, and secrets. Facts about a project go into that project’s memory, not the workspace’s. About once a week after lines changed, or sooner when a memory grows too long, a tidy run lays the file out again: it sorts lines into topics, merges repeats and moves what a newer line replaced to the archive. It never takes away a large share of the file at once.

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Dates and who wins

Every line shows the day it was learned or last confirmed, such as “19 Oct”. A line you wrote yourself also shows your name. Older lines from before memory kept dates show “before” a day. Teammates follow three rules when lines disagree:
  • The newer line wins.
  • A line a person wrote outranks one a teammate learned.
  • A line about code, an account or a provider is checked before a teammate relies on it. When the check shows it is wrong, the teammate says so in its reply, and the next memory run fixes the line.
When another thread teaches memory something new, a running thread learns it at the start of its next turn.

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See and edit memory

Open Library and the Memory tab. You see a card for the workspace, one for each project with memory, one for each teammate, then the latest Thread summaries.
  • The core’s lines are listed first. Topics are folded: open one to see its lines, with how many and the newest date.
  • Hover a line’s date to see where it came from. Click it to open the thread it was learned in.
  • Choose Edit to open the memory in the document editor. Add, change or delete lines as you would in any document, then choose Done.
A project’s memory is also on its page and in its settings, under Open memory. Any member can edit memory, and each change is recorded.
To teach every teammate a rule, write it in the workspace memory yourself. Lines a person writes outrank what teammates learned.

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Topics in the editor

A memory is one Markdown file. The lines before the first ## heading are the core. Each ## heading starts a topic, and the paragraph under it says when to read it. To move a line to another topic, move it under that heading. To rename a topic, rename its heading.

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Removed lines

Lines that leave memory, replaced, merged, outdated or deleted by a person, go to an archive. Teammates no longer load them, but search still finds them. At the bottom of a memory card, choose N lines removed to see them, with why, when, by whom and the thread each was learned in. Search them, and choose Put back on a line that still holds. A line you delete minutes after writing it counts as a draft and leaves nothing in the archive. The search box at the top of Library searches files, memory and past threads at once. Teammates search the same way, so they find thread summaries and removed lines when the work calls for them.