Memories

Agents run into things worth remembering: a build step that has to happen in a certain order, a convention that isn't written down, a trap that cost an hour. A memory is one of those, written down while the work was happening.

Memories are not injected into later prompts automatically. They are reviewed first, and only what survives review becomes durable guidance. The point is to accumulate knowledge across runs without letting one agent's wrong guess become everyone's rule.

Where you see them

Settings > Memories lists them, grouped by status with a count for each. You can read any memory and move it to a different status yourself.

How a memory moves

• draft — captured by an agent while it was working. Drafts are still provisional; the work that produced them may not have landed.
• pending — the work landed, so the memory is queued for review.
• claimed — gathered into a triage issue and being reviewed.
• promoted, discarded, or deferred — the decision that review reached. Promoted memories become durable guidance; deferred ones go back in the queue.

Scope

Every memory is scoped, which decides who it applies to:

• project — one project.
• role — agents doing a particular job, such as every builder.
• workspace — everything.

Settings

Two controls, both under Settings > Memories:

Memory review (on by default) asks an agent to look over its own drafts at the end of a job — editing them, deleting ones that turned out to be wrong, and adding anything it missed while the work is still fresh. Turning it off means drafts go to review unedited.

Pending threshold (5 by default) is how many pending memories accumulate in a single scope before Cairn opens a triage issue to review them as a batch.

Capture

Agents write memories themselves, as part of working — there is nothing to do to turn it on. If you are writing your own agents or automation, capture happens through the same write verb as everything else; see The three verbs.