Memory

Mona has persistent memory that survives restarts, session changes, and even profile switches. Memory is stored locally in ~/.monoclaw/memory/.

Memory files

MEMORY.md

~/.monoclaw/memory/MEMORY.md is Mona's general knowledge base. It contains:

• Facts about you and your preferences
• Learned workflows and shortcuts
• Important context from past conversations

Mona reads this at the start of every session and updates it when she learns something new.

USER.md

~/.monoclaw/memory/USER.md stores your explicit preferences:

• Name, timezone, language
• Communication style preferences
• Frequently used tools and workflows
• Project-specific context

Edit this file directly to seed Mona's knowledge:

# User Profile

- Name: Alex
- Timezone: Asia/Hong_Kong
- Language: English, Cantonese
- Preferred editor: VS Code
- Common projects: /Users/alex/projects/web-app

Session search

Mona can search her session history to recall past conversations:

What did we decide about the database schema last week?

This triggers a semantic search across all stored sessions.

How memory works

1. Learning — During conversations, Mona identifies facts worth remembering
2. Storage — She appends them to MEMORY.md or USER.md
3. Retrieval — At session start, she loads both files into context
4. Search — For specific queries, she searches session history

Memory limits

• File size — MEMORY.md is limited to ~8K tokens. Old entries are summarized.
• Session history — Unlimited, but semantic search returns top-K matches.
• Cross-profile — Memory is per-profile. Switching profiles switches memory.

Memory management

Clean up old memories

monoclaw memory tidy

This:

• Summarizes redundant entries
• Removes outdated facts
• Archives old memories to ~/.monoclaw/memory/archive/

Export memory

monoclaw memory export > my-memory.md

Reset memory

monoclaw memory reset

Memory vs skills

Privacy

Memory files are stored locally in ~/.monoclaw/memory/. They are:

• Never uploaded to the cloud
• Encrypted if full-disk encryption is enabled
• Portable — copy to another machine to transfer memories

For cloud-based memory with deeper user modeling, see the Honcho Memory guide.