What belongs in shared memory

Say to your agent: "Remember my preference for short recommendations, but keep this session's setup and credentials out of shared memory."

GBrain can carry durable facts and preferences between agents that have access to the same brain and source. It does not replace the harness's identity, instructions, configuration, or permission controls.

Durable knowledge versus runtime state

Save explicit requests to remember with provenance: preferences, corrections, decisions, commitments, and facts the user wants available later. For example, "I want meeting briefs in three bullets" is useful shared knowledge. Recall it before the next brief, and verify corrections against the stored record.

Keep current task progress, temporary tool output, local paths, enabled plugins, MCP connection settings, credentials, and harness activation state in the appropriate local configuration or session state. A remembered preference does not install a skill, change an authorization grant, or override higher-priority instructions. Do not put secrets in memory pages. A durable decision about a setup can be recorded without copying its credentials or assuming that setup is active in another harness.

Automatic capture is opt-in. Time-limited facts need an explicit TTL; ordinary saved facts do not expire just because they describe a temporary situation. forget withdraws a fact from active recall, not from all source material, history, or private backups. See ambient writeback.

Page writes and the graph are separate outcomes

Write path	Graph behavior
Trusted local put_page / capture	Extracts supported page references without an LLM when auto-linking is enabled.
MCP put_page / capture, including stdio	Saves body references as text; no inline graph extraction. The receipt reports auto_links.skipped: remote.
Stdio gbrain serve	Has bounded, best-effort startup and idle maintenance sweeps, unless disabled. This is eventual maintenance, not a guarantee that a remote write immediately has edges.
gbrain serve --http	Does not self-sweep. The host must run maintenance explicitly.

For an HTTP brain, ask the host operator to run gbrain sweep --once (it can delegate to the live server over local IPC), or explicitly extract links and timeline entries for the intended source. Use an authorized add_link operation for an edge needed immediately, then verify it with get_links or a graph query. Check the write receipt and the graph separately; a saved page is not proof of graph reconciliation. See graph setup.

Where text goes

Local storage does not mean every enabled feature runs locally. Keyless keyword retrieval and deterministic link extraction need no model API. Configured cloud embeddings receive the text being embedded; rerankers receive the query and candidate passages; expansion receives the query; synthesis and LLM extraction receive the relevant retrieved content or source text. Self-hosted providers have their own deployment boundary. The connected agent's own model also receives whatever memory its harness includes in context, even on a keyless GBrain setup.

Enable paid capabilities and automatic capture only with consent, using the provider's actual data-handling policy. See installation capabilities and spend controls. A spending cap is not a promise that no text leaves the machine.

Sharing and backup limits

Remote access depends on authenticated source/operation grants and visibility filters. Sources organize memory; they do not isolate agents that share local files or database credentials. Stdio is local access, not an HTTP client grant. Read brains and sources before choosing a sharing topology. Tests cover specific boundaries, not a universal security guarantee.

Markdown export is a portable view of pages, not a full database backup. DB-only facts and pages, revision history, withdrawal state, jobs, settings, and authentication records may not be recoverable from Markdown. Use the engine's full backup/restore path and verify a restore into a separate location. Treat database backups as sensitive. See the system-of-record contract and isolated local backup guide.

Verify in the actual harness

Use a generic, unique test fact: remember it, recall it, correct it, recall the correction, withdraw it, and confirm active recall no longer returns it. Then open a new conversation in the intended harness and repeat recall with another saved test fact. A local CLI test proves local storage, not skill activation or cross-conversation recall in Grok Bot, Muse, Codex, or Claude Code.