The vault series · 1 of 5
Your agent's memory dies on rename.
The whole industry converged on the same fix for agent amnesia: write things down in special files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, .cursorrules) or store it against your vendor account. Every one of those chains knowledge to something fragile: a path, a repo, an account. Reorganize your project and the knowledge doesn't come along. It just quietly becomes wrong.
TL;DR · key takeaways
- Path-keyed agent memory (CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, wiki pages) break silently the moment you rename or move a file. The note keeps pointing at a path that no longer exists.
- Interlinked keys every note and relationship to the file's permanent OS identity, not its path, so knowledge follows the file through any rename, move, or refactor. The rename becomes a non-event.
- It's machine-wide: notes span all your repos plus the ~90% of the disk that was never in git, and are read and written by every agent (19 clients): no vendor owns your memory.
- Memory rides along on the whole-machine search the agent already runs (content in ~7 to 9 ms, index fresh in ~1 ms), so it arrives with zero extra calls and stays 100% local.
- Keep your CLAUDE.md; the vault covers what path-keyed files structurally can't. Everything local free forever, no card. Hosting starts at $5.99/mo.
One rename, two architectures
Chain knowledge to a path, and every refactor is a memory wipe.
Windows assigns every file a permanent identity the moment it's created: an identity that survives renames, moves, and reorganizations, tracked by the filesystem itself. Nobody builds memory on it because almost nothing outside the OS can see it. We index the whole machine, so we can. Every note and every relationship in the vault keys to that identity. The rename above isn't an edge case we handle: it's a non-event.
Every place agent knowledge lives today
Six memory systems. One survives a refactor.
| System | Knowledge keyed to | On rename/move | Scope | Who reads it | Maintained by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md | a path in one repo | breaks silently | one repo | one vendor | you, by hand |
| .cursorrules / rules files | a path in one repo | breaks silently | one repo | one editor | you, by hand |
| ChatGPT / Claude memory | your account | n/a, never saw your files | conversations | one vendor | the vendor |
| Mem0-class memory stores | user / session ids | n/a | app-defined | apps you wire up | your integration |
| Notion / wiki pages | a page, far from the files | goes stale | what you wrote | humans only | you, by hand |
| Interlinked vault | the file's OS identity | follows automatically | whole machine, every repo + non-repo | every agent (19 clients) | itself + any agent |
None of these are bad tools: keep your CLAUDE.md; it's good at project-level instructions. The gap is structural: path-keyed and account-keyed memory cannot follow the work. File-identity keying can, and only a machine-wide index is positioned to do it.
What changes for the agent
Memory that arrives exactly when it's needed.
Vault knowledge doesn't sit in a file the agent must remember to read. It rides along on the searches the agent already runs: touch a file, and the notes on it (and on any parent folder) surface underneath the search hit. A folder note like "this is a collection of separate repos that ship together, not a monorepo" reaches every agent that ever touches anything inside, from any vendor, with zero extra calls.
And it's two-way. Agents write terse notes as they learn (a gotcha, a cross-file tie) and every future agent inherits them. Claude Code learns something on Monday; Cursor benefits on Tuesday. The memory belongs to your machine, not to a vendor.
The principle
Their memory dies on rename. Ours doesn't even notice.
NEXT IN THE SERIES: FILES THAT FIND EACH OTHER, HOW THE VAULT BUILDS ITSELF.
FAQ · common questions
The obvious questions, answered plainly.
Doesn't CLAUDE.md already solve agent memory?
It solves project-level instructions well. Keep it. But it's keyed to a path inside one repo, so a rename or move silently orphans whatever pointed at that path, and it can't cover the ~90% of your disk that was never in git. The vault is the complementary layer that survives refactors and spans the whole machine.
How does a note survive a file being renamed or moved?
Every note and relationship is keyed to the file's permanent OS identity, not its path. Windows assigns that identity when the file is created and keeps it through renames and moves, so the note follows the file automatically: the rename is a non-event, not an edge case we patch.
Do agents have to remember to read the vault?
No. Vault knowledge rides along on the whole-machine searches an agent already runs: touch a file and its notes, plus any parent-folder notes, surface under the search hit. Search returns content in ~7 to 9 ms and the index stays fresh in ~1 ms, so context arrives with zero extra calls.
Which agents can read it, and does my data leave the machine?
Every agent configured at install (19 clients, including Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex) reads and writes the same vault, so what Claude Code learns on Monday helps Cursor on Tuesday. It's 100% local: the vault is a sealed store on your disk, and nothing in it is uploaded unless you publish a project.
What does it cost?
Everything local is free forever: the desktop app and the MCP layer every client plugs into, no card. Hosting your projects starts at $5.99/mo. No AI keys, no tiers, no per-query caps.
Using it
Keep your CLAUDE.md. Add a memory that moves.
Project instructions belong in your rules files: that's what they're good at. The vault covers what they structurally can't: file-level and folder-level knowledge that survives reorganization, spans all your repos plus the 90% of the disk that was never in git, and is shared by every agent you run. It starts working the moment Interlinked is installed: the relationships build themselves, and notes accumulate as your agents work.
Everything local is free, forever: the app, whole-machine search, MCP. Hosting starts at $5.99/mo. Download for Windows · Previously: the backbone of the LLM economy