# Personal memory

Canonical URL: https://docs.perisclaw.com/personal-memory

A good assistant is only as useful as how well it knows you. Someone who's worked with you for years knows how you speak to your boss versus your team, what you never want to be bothered with, and the rules you expect followed without being told. That depth is what makes an assistant feel like yours instead of generic. It's exactly what personal memory gives Perisclaw.

Perisclaw learns how you work and applies it across every chat and session.

## What it learns

* **How you talk to different people.** The way you write to your mom, in a friends' group, and to a colleague are all different. Perisclaw learns these differences and matches the right tone for whoever you're talking to.
* **From your edits.** Shorten a draft once and it keeps them short. Adjust the tone and it remembers, so over time your drafts come out right without correction.
* **Your standing rules and preferences.** *"Don't ping me before 10am,"* *"no emojis for the Board group,"* *"always draft in the first person."* These get stored and applied everywhere.
* **Your shorthand.** Tell it once that "the boss" is Rahul, or that "the standup" is a particular group, and it knows who and what you mean from then on.

![Perisclaw confirming it has noted a preference to avoid Friday afternoon meetings, updated the profile, and offering to block that time as deep work going forward]

## The more you use it, the better it gets

Each preference Perisclaw stores is one you never have to give again. It needs less correction over time, and it grows more like you the more you use it, until your assistant simply gets it.

## How to use it

Just tell Perisclaw what to remember (or forget) in plain language:

* *"Remember that 'the boss' refers to @contact."*
* *"Never use emojis when drafting for the 'Board Members' group."*
* *"Always keep my replies to @contact crisp and direct."*
* *"Forget the rule about drafting in the third person."*

## Read and edit it yourself

None of this is a black box. Open **Skills → Context** in your dashboard and you can read exactly what Perisclaw has written down about you, and change it directly.

That's the fastest fix for a stubborn misunderstanding: rather than correcting the same thing in five conversations, open the file and rewrite the line. Every edit is version-tracked, so you can always see what changed and roll back to what was there before. See [Custom skills](/custom-skills).

  Some rules are stronger than others. When you tell Perisclaw something must
  hold **every time**, like *"all my calls are 45 minutes unless I say
  otherwise,"* it records it as a hard rule and checks it before every send,
  booking, and schedule. It'll read the exact rule back to you when it saves
  it, so you know it landed.

  Personal memory is about **you** (your tone, rules, and shorthand). For what
  Perisclaw remembers about the people you talk to, see [Relationship
  memory](/relationship-memory).

### [What it remembers about others](/relationship-memory)

Life updates and preferences for the people you talk to.

### [Teach it a procedure](/custom-skills)

Turn how you work into a skill Perisclaw follows every time.