SUPPORTING KNOWLEDGE · 0007
How Berd remembers you¶
Berd has no single "memory" feature. Berdy's instructions describe tailoring as a spectrum, and the job is to find the right home for each durable thing you notice about how you work. There are four homes:
| Home | What goes there | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Settings | App annoyances: appearance, notifications, shortcuts | The app |
| Global hints | Standing rules every agent follows in every session | ~/.config/goose/AGENTS.md, plain text |
| Memory | Categorised facts and preferences: your tools, how you like to be spoken to, ongoing interests | ~/.config/goose/memory/, plain text, through the memory extension's remember and retrieve tools |
| Skills, agents, projects (and automations, in distributions that enable them) | Patterns that save work | Files under ~/.agents/ and in the app |
Berdy's own examples draw the lines: "you have asked me to tighten things up three times" is a memory; "you do this every Monday" is an automation — in Block's internal distribution, where Berdy also runs; in the v0.6.4 public build, which compiles automations off, it is a skill, with berd-monitor or berd-orchestrator for the part that runs on its own; "that notification is annoying" is a setting; "always ask before sending anything for me" is a global hint. Hints are for rules, memories are for facts, and the last row is the one people forget: a skill remembers your context, an agent remembers how you like to be helped, a project remembers what you are building.
Everything lands in plain text on your own computer, and one entry improves every agent, not only Berdy.
Why it matters to you¶
For a consultant the memory homes are where client material could quietly accumulate: a fact saved for one engagement persists into the next. That is why Berdy's five rules for memory matter as much as the feature:
- Check before acting. Retrieve what is remembered and follow the hints; say briefly when a memory shaped an answer.
- Propose, never save silently. Say word for word what would be saved and where, then wait for a clear yes. If you tweak the wording, yours is used. A no is dropped and not brought back.
- Only true and traceable. Only things you said or did in conversation. Never a guess at anything sensitive.
- Your hand always wins. View, change or delete anything, any time; nothing you changed gets "corrected".
- Never act as you. Anything sent on your behalf is drafted, shown in full, and waits for your go-ahead.
Sparse is the stated preference: three true entries beat thirty guessed ones.
How to apply it¶
Sort before you save. When you notice something durable, ask which of the four homes it belongs in. Most things people want to "remember" are patterns that should become a skill (or, where your distribution enables them, an automation), which save work rather than store information about you.
Say yes precisely. When Berdy proposes a memory, read the exact wording; it is what every future Goose session will read too.
Keep client facts out of memory unless they belong in every future engagement. Put engagement facts in the project's description or a project-local skill instead, where they end with the project.
Know the boundary. These paths are Goose's. The sources do not say whether a Claude, Codex or other ACP session reads them; assume not until verified.
Ask to see it. "Show me what you remember about me" is a fair request, and the answer is a set of files you could also open yourself.
If you ignore this¶
Memory fills with guesses and half-relevant facts, every agent starts from a slightly wrong picture of you, and nobody can say where a given assumption came from. Or a client detail saved in March turns up in a September draft for someone else.
Examples¶
A good assistant's notebook: rules on the first page, facts in the back, and the assistant reads a new entry aloud before writing it down. You can tear out any page.
Global hint: "Never send anything on my behalf without showing me the full text first." Memory: "Prefers findings stated as hypotheses until a specialist has validated them." Not saved: "Client's CFO is difficult", because that was an inference, not something you said.
Expecting a Codex session to honour a rule you saved with Berdy. The rule is in ~/.config/goose/AGENTS.md; whether anything but Goose reads it is not documented.
Do it: Teach Berd how you work
Last checked: Berd v0.6.4, 2026-09-11.
Reference¶
- block/berd — distro/agents/berdy.md — the tailoring spectrum and the rules for memory
- block/berd — src/features/settings/ui/settingsSections.ts — the current settings sections
- What a skill is — instructions, skill and memory as three sources of behaviour, in the Buzz Guide
- Verified
- Berd v0.6.4 · 2026-09-11