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BERD TASK · 0012 · BUILD YOUR CAST

Teach Berd how you work

Berdy's stated purpose is a two-way introduction: it shows you Berd, and it learns how you work so every agent works your way. What it learns is written to plain text files on your disk, and nothing is written without your word-for-word yes. This page is how to use that deliberately — and how to keep client material out of it.

Steps at a glance

  1. Sort each durable thing by its home
  2. Let Berdy propose; say yes word for word, or no
  3. Keep memory sparse
  4. Ask to see, change or delete any of it
  5. Know that this is Goose's memory

1. Sort each durable thing by its home

Berdy's instructions call tailoring a spectrum, not a feature, and name four homes. The test for each is a sentence:

You notice It is It lives in
"That notification is annoying" A setting Settings — appearance, notifications, shortcuts, behaviour
"Always ask before sending anything for me" A standing rule for every agent, every session The global hints file, ~/.config/goose/AGENTS.md
"You've asked me to tighten things up three times" A fact or preference The memory extension, categorised entries under ~/.config/goose/memory/
"You do this every Monday" A pattern that saves work A skill, an agent or a project (or an automation, in distributions that enable them — not the v0.6.4 public build)

Hints are for rules; memories are for facts. The fourth row is the one people forget: a skill remembers your method, an agent remembers how you like to be helped, a project remembers what you are building. Berdy names automations as a fourth home because it also runs in Block's internal distribution; in the public build a Monday routine becomes a skill, and the bundled berd-monitor and berd-orchestrator skills cover work that should run on its own — see Run long work outside the turn. Those homes save work, not information about you, which is why Berdy is told to offer them first.

2. Let Berdy propose; say yes word for word, or no

Berdy's rules for memory are absolute in its own instructions, and the second one is the gate: propose, never save silently. When it notices something durable it says exactly what it would save, word for word, and where it would live, then waits for a clear yes. If you change the wording, yours is used. If you say no, it drops the item and does not raise it again. It does not ask questions in order to have something to save, does not fish for details the task does not need, and offers at most once per conversation in the early days.

So the discipline on your side is simple: read the proposed text as if it were going into a file a colleague might open, because it is. Say yes to the sentence, not the idea. If the proposed entry mentions a client — a name, a sector, a document — say no, and tell Berdy the rule: nothing about clients gets remembered. That rule is itself a good first global hint.

[SCREENSHOT: T12-01 — Berdy proposing a memory]

3. Keep memory sparse

Berdy's own line: three true entries beat thirty guessed ones. It is instructed to save only what you actually said or did, never to infer anything sensitive — health, emotions, identity, how you are doing — and to ask rather than guess. Hold it to that, and hold yourself to it. A memory that says "prefers short answers with the decision first" improves every agent in Berd. A memory that says "is stressed about the Q3 deliverable" improves nothing and now exists on disk.

Berdy also treats how much personality you want as a preference worth remembering, so every agent gets it right. If you want them all business, say so once.

4. Ask to see, change or delete any of it

The framing Berdy is given is that memory is yours, not Berd's. You can ask it to show any of it, change any of it, or delete all of it, and it is instructed to help the moment you ask and never to argue with or "correct" what you changed. Because the homes are plain text files, you can also open them yourself: the hints file is one markdown document, the memory folder is a set of categorised entries. Read them at the end of the first week. What you find is what every Goose session has been starting from.

[SCREENSHOT: T12-02 — the AGENTS.md hints file]

5. Know that this is Goose's memory

Both paths are under ~/.config/goose/, and the memory extension's remember and retrieve tools are Goose's. A session on Claude Code, Codex or another harness presumably does not read them — the sources are silent, so treat that as the working assumption rather than a verified fact. If you run mixed harnesses, the rules you care about most belong in a skill or an agent's instructions, which every harness can load, rather than only in Goose's hints.

Berdy will also mention, once and in passing, that Berd can remember your preferences. If you are not interested, one mention is the ceiling and everything else still works.

Watch out

Anything Berdy remembers shapes every Goose session from then on and sits in plain text on the laptop. Approve entries sentence by sentence, and never let a client's name, material or situation into hints or memory — if it might be needed later, it belongs in the project's description or in Buzz, not in what Berd knows about you.

Last checked: Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 — read from source and release notes, not yet tested in the app.

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Reference

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Verified
Berd v0.6.4 · 2026-09-11 · source-read
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Guide built with Berd, Claude and Codex · verified against Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11 · read from source, not yet tested in the app · Buzz Guide · About · not affiliated with Block