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.

Not quite this? Use memory-file-maintenance when you already have a memory file that has drifted and needs pruning.

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]

# Don't repeat these (past lessons)
- [mistakes not to make again]

# How I like things done
- [communication / output / process preferences]

How to use it: [paste at the start of a session, or add to your AI's global config]. Keeping it alive: add one line whenever you notice a rule or lesson.

Not stored here: passwords, account/card numbers, financial or health details, home address, auth info, or other people's personal information. Keep those in a secure place you control — never in AI-readable memory.

Quality Checks

• Draws content out through questions, not a blank template
• Captures decision rules, patterns, and past-failure lessons
• Written as concrete, AI-usable statements
• Explicitly excludes and refuses sensitive/personal data
• Is a maintainable, living format with usage guidance

Anti-Patterns

• A blank template with no interviewing.
• Vague self-description an AI can't act on.
• Storing sensitive data (credentials, financial, health, others' info) — hard no.
• A one-off file with no way to keep it current.

Example Trigger Phrases

• "Help me build a MEMORY.md so my AI understands how I work."
• "Interview me into a personal context file for Claude."
• "I'm tired of re-explaining myself to AI — set up my memory."
• "Create a file of my decision rules and preferences."
• "Help my AI remember my patterns and past mistakes."