What is persistent memory in AI?
Persistent memory is an AI's ability to remember information across separate conversations - your preferences, people, and past requests - instead of forgetting everything when a chat ends.
Most chatbots are stateless: each session starts blank. Persistent memory gives an AI a durable store of context it can recall and build on, so it learns who you are over time and stops asking you to repeat yourself.
Good persistent memory is more than a transcript - it's structured context (preferences, relationships, routines) the AI can use to make better decisions, like booking the aisle seat you always choose.
how this works in folk
Folk builds a persistent memory graph for every user. Six months in, it still knows your favorite restaurants, your partner's allergies, and how you like your briefings - and uses that to act.
frequently asked
Why don't most chatbots remember me?
They're designed to be stateless for simplicity and privacy. Persistent memory requires deliberately storing and retrieving your context, which assistants like folk are built to do.
Is persistent memory private?
It should be. Folk keeps your memory in an isolated, per-user sandbox and never uses it to train AI models.