An agent that forgets everything when the terminal closes is a goldfish with tools. Real work spans days and projects, and the agent needs to remember three different things, each with its own lifetime.
The session — this specific conversation, so you can close your laptop and resume tomorrow. User memory — durable facts about you that follow the agent across every project. The workspace handoff — where the work stands in this repo, so the next session starts without re-discovering everything.
All three are the same trick you have used since Week 4: the conversation is just data, so memory is just files. No database, no service — a JSONL transcript, a directory of markdown facts, and a PROGRESS.md.
Durable state lives in plain files on disk, written as it happens. That makes memory inspectable, portable, and crash-proof.
The walkthrough
Each part adds one capability to the same growing codebase, and each is a runnable checkpoint.
- 01SessionsA durable transcript — one line per message, saved live as it happens.
- 02ResumePick a session back up days later with full fidelity.
- 03User memoryDurable facts about you, scoped across projects.
- 04Workspace stateWhere the work stands in this repo, right now.
- 05The handoffA PROGRESS.md that lets a fresh session continue without a re-brief.
After this week you can
- Make agent sessions durable and resumable
- Design memory with the right lifetime for each kind of fact
- Hand work off cleanly between sessions