Build My Memory File

Build My Memory File

The single biggest upgrade to working with AI isn't a better prompt — it's a MEMORY.md that captures how you work, so you stop re-explaining yourself every session. This interviews you into one: your decision criteria, recurring patterns, past mistakes worth not repeating, and preferences — organized so any AI can read it and help you better. And it has a hard privacy line: no credentials, no financial, health, or other people's personal data.

What This Skill Produces

• A structured MEMORY.md — your durable personal context, in sections an AI can use
• Your decision rules — how you actually make choices, your criteria, your non-negotiables
• Your patterns — the things you keep doing (good and bad), your recurring instructions and preferences
• Your "don't repeat these" — past failures and lessons worth remembering
• Working preferences — how you like things done, communicated, and delivered
• A privacy firewall — an explicit list of what NOT to store, and it refuses to include it

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The scope — general life, or a specific domain (work, a project, health-adjacent-but-not-sensitive)
• What you keep re-explaining — the context you're tired of repeating to AI
• Your patterns — decisions you make the same way, mistakes you repeat
• Your preferences — how you like output, communication, and process

Framework: Interview, Structure, Protect

1. Draw it out with questions. Most people can't just list their operating rules — good questions surface them ("how do you usually decide X?", "what do you keep having to redo?").
2. Capture rules, patterns, and failures. The high-value contents: decision criteria, recurring preferences, and past mistakes not to repeat.
3. Write it for an AI to use. Structure it in clear sections with concrete, actionable statements — not vague self-description.
4. Enforce the privacy line. Explicitly refuse to store credentials, account numbers, financial details, health data, home address, authentication info, or other people's personal information — and tell the user to manage those elsewhere.
5. Make it maintainable. Keep it a living file — a format easy to add one line to over time, and a note on how to use it (paste it, or reference it in a global AI config).

Output Format

MEMORY.md — [scope]

# My decision rules
- [how I decide X / my criteria / non-negotiables]

# My patterns
- [recurring preferences, instructions, tendencies]