Memory & System Brief
The single biggest difference between Autopilot and a generic chatbot is that Autopilot knows your instance. It builds up a memory of your world and keeps a living summary — the System Brief — that every agent reads before it acts. Together these are what make it get sharper over time instead of starting cold every run.
The System Brief
The System Brief is a short, plain-language summary of your whole instance. Think of it as the one-page handover note a new analyst would read before starting a shift — except it’s always up to date, and every agent reads it before every action.
It’s assembled fresh each time from two things: live facts pulled straight from your instance, and the lessons Autopilot has saved in memory. Because the facts are read live, the brief never goes stale or drifts away from reality.
A brief typically covers:
| Section | What it tells the agents |
|---|---|
| Overview | A few sentences on what this instance is for — the one part the crew writes in its own words. |
| Coverage | Live counts: how many sources, findings, custom detectors, inquiries, and cases exist right now. |
| Glossary | The key terms specific to your organisation. |
| Topics | Which subjects map to which inquiries and cases. |
| Gaps | Known blind spots and detector ideas still to try. |
| Setup | A practical checklist — is an AI provider configured? Are there silent sources? Which agents are switched on? |
Because the Setup section is built from real state, the System Brief doubles as a to-do list for you. If Autopilot isn’t doing something you expect, the brief usually tells you why (e.g. “no AI provider configured”).
You can read the current brief — and edit its overview in your own words — under the Brief tab of the Harness panel.
What Autopilot remembers
Alongside the brief, Autopilot keeps a longer-term memory of durable lessons. This is not a transcript of past chats; it’s a curated set of facts worth keeping. There are a few kinds:
| Memory kind | Example | Why it’s kept |
|---|---|---|
| Glossary | “‘PRD’ means our production environment, not a product doc.” | So agents read your data the way your team does. |
| Decision precedents | ”We treat test-data card numbers as false positives.” | So past calls are applied consistently. |
| Topic map | “‘Credential leak’ findings belong to Inquiry #12.” | So related findings land in the right place. |
| Source & detector notes | ”Enabled the secrets pack on the wiki source; expecting key matches.” | So a later run can check whether a change worked. |
| Operator directives | ”Never open cases for the staging environment.” | Your standing instructions — see below. |
Every memory entry carries a weight (how important it is, which nudges how strongly it’s recalled) and tags (for grouping and search). You can browse, search, edit, and delete entries under the Memory tab of the Harness panel.
Operator directives — your standing orders
Some memory is sacred: the instructions you give Autopilot. These are called operator directives, and they are treated differently from everything else.
- They express your standing policy — “don’t touch the staging sources,” “always treat IBANs as high severity,” “focus on customer-data exposure.”
- The Dream agent’s housekeeping never prunes or rewrites them. Ordinary learned notes can be merged or trimmed; your directives stay exactly as you set them.
- They steer every agent, every cycle, until you change them.
This is the cleanest way to encode a permanent rule. For one-off nudges, use a manual run with an instruction instead — see Steering & Fine-Tuning.
How memory stays healthy
Left alone, any growing memory turns into clutter. That’s the Dream agent’s job: on a quiet schedule it consolidates entries, removes duplicates and noise, distils long notes into crisp lessons, and refreshes the brief’s overview — while always leaving your operator directives untouched.
The result is memory that keeps getting clearer, so Autopilot’s understanding of your world compounds instead of decaying.
Next: put it all to work — every toggle and knob is in Steering & Fine-Tuning.