Memory and knowledge: overview
Understand the different kinds of context OpenbirdAI uses — conversation context, account memory, workspace memory and retrieved knowledge.
OpenFeather draws on four distinct kinds of context. They behave differently, have different lifetimes and different access rules, and confusing them is the most common source of "why did it not remember that?" questions.
The four kinds of context
- Conversation context — the messages in the conversation you are currently in. It is scoped to that conversation and does not leak into a new one.
- Account memory — durable context attached to your user identity, used for preferences and recurring facts. It is not shared with other users.
- Workspace memory — durable context shared inside a workspace, so a team does not have to repeat shared facts.
- Retrieved knowledge — evidence pulled from connected services or the web for the current request. It is temporary and re-verified every run.
How context is assembled
Before OpenFeather answers, a context planner selects the minimum context the request needs, within a strict token budget, and ranks candidates by lexical relevance, recency and entity match. Recent turns of the current conversation are always retained so follow-ups stay coherent.
Because selection is budgeted rather than exhaustive, a fact that is neither in the selected context nor retrievable will produce an "I could not verify that" answer. That is the budget working as intended, not a bug.
What is deliberately not remembered
- Provider credentials and access tokens.
- Raw content of private records beyond what a run actually needed.
- Content from one workspace in another workspace's context.
- Anything from a conversation you no longer have access to.
Managing what OpenFeather knows
- Decide whether the fact belongs to the conversation, your account, or the workspace.
- Store durable shared facts in workspace memory, not in a conversation.
- Correct stale memory explicitly — an updated memory entry replaces the old one.
- Reset context with a new conversation when a subject changes completely.
Common questions
Why did OpenFeather forget something I told it?
It was conversation context, which does not carry into a new conversation, or it was never written to durable memory. Store durable facts in workspace or account memory.
Can another workspace see my memory?
No. Workspace memory is isolated per workspace and account memory is scoped to your user identity.