Saving

It saves only when you command it with `ak`. The conventions that make memories worth having, and how to correct or retire one afterwards.

Memory doesn't get better on its own. Consistency in how you save decides the quality of the graph.

When it saves: only on an ak command

AiAkiv does not save your conversation automatically. It saves only when you explicitly command it with ak (any language: "ak save this" works fine).

  • Simply saying "remember this" or "save that" does not save.
  • This is the guard that keeps stray chatter and secrets out of your graph by accident.
  • AI clients follow the same rule → For AI agents.

Conventions that make a memory worth having

1) Record a decision as four parts

When you save a decision, leave four things so it can be retraced later.

  1. What you decided
  2. Why (the reasoning)
  3. The alternatives you considered and why you rejected them
  4. The related commit hash (on a code project)

Without the alternatives and the rejection reasons, nobody can later tell why you didn't take a different road. This is the most valuable part of the graph.

2) Save a bug together with its cause

When you save while fixing a bug: symptom / root cause (the past event or decision that caused it) / the fix / commit hash. Tie the root cause to the past event and causal questions like "which past decision caused this bug?" become answerable later.

3) One name per entity

Always call the same thing by the same name (if you settled on "save format", keep saying that). If the name wobbles, one entity splits into several and the connections break.

4) Attach tags

A kind tag (decision / bug / balance / retro …) plus tags for the system or topic. The more consistent the tags, the better search gets.

5) If it's long, chain it: don't trim it

Don't cut important content just to make it shorter. If the text is long, chain it. Search gives you the summary, but the original has to be preserved for you to recover it later.

A single save takes up to 50,000 characters of body text. Past that, split it, but chain the pieces into a thread so they don't scatter: pass the previous save's event_id as prev_event_id on the next one and they link in order. As a person, "ak continue saving" is all you need to say. Details and caveats in Threads.

Only save what's safe

AiAkiv is an outside service and what you store stays (→ What to store). So only put in what's safe to put in from the start. Don't include:

  • Real names (use aliases) or personal data
  • API keys, tokens, secrets
  • Company confidential information or sensitive figures
  • Chatter unrelated to the topic

Correcting a save afterwards: edit and retire

Don't re-save because you got something wrong. You'll end up with two copies of the same content. There are two handles for a memory that's already saved, and they do different things.

Edit Retire
What it touches Entities · tags · chaining (thread links) The whole memory
The original text Can't be changed: it's preserved as is Stays as is
Result It matches search better Drops out of recall: gone from search, neighbors, and traversal
How you say it "ak fix the tags on what I just saved" "ak retire what I just saved"

Edit: when what the AI extracted is wrong

The original text is yours, so there's no reason to touch it. What can be wrong is the part the AI produced: the entities it auto-extracted, the tags it suggested, and its judgment about whether a save continues the previous one.

  • An entity was caught wrongly or missed (this is also where you repair a broken one-name-per-entity rule)
  • You want to attach or detach tags
  • Two saves should have been chained and weren't, or were chained and shouldn't have been

If you need to change the original text itself, editing won't do it. Retire that memory and save it again.

Structural links created by ingesting a whole document (chunk, file, and folder order) cannot be cut. That information can't be rebuilt, which is why. if it's refused, don't retry.

Retire: taking it out of recall

Use it when something was saved by mistake, went to the wrong project, or has gone stale and you'd rather it stopped coming up.

⚠ Retiring is not deleting. It drops out of search and recall, but the data itself remains. And undoing it is an operator action, not something a tool can do. Retiring is effectively one-way.

  • You can only retire your own team's memories. Another team's are refused.
  • There is no way for a user to physically delete a single memory. The only things that remove the original are deleting the team and closing your account (console → Danger zone, not reversible → Console).

So retiring does not solve personal data or secrets. That's exactly why not putting them in is the only sure method (see Only save what's safe above and What to store).

persona: the project dictates the saving style

A project can carry a persona (a standing instruction set by its owner). For example: "always save decisions together with the alternatives considered and the reason for rejection." An AI saving into that project follows it. A persona only changes the style of saving; it does not override the ak command rule.

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