How is memory handled in OpenClaw AI agents?

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How is memory handled in OpenClaw’s AI agents?

Unless you’ve been completely offline lately, you have probably heard about OpenClaw.

For those new to it, OpenClaw is an open-source, configurable agent framework

The good thing is that it runs locally and gives AI Agents real operational capabilities.

A social networking site specifically for AI Agents – “Moltbook” was also launched after that

So, how can OpenClaw agents help us? They can

1. Read your inbox → summarise important emails → draft replies → schedule a meeting → send calendar invites automatically.

2. You speak a command → the agent updates a spreadsheet → sends a Slack message → confirms back using text-to-speech.

3. Scrape a competitor’s website → collect pricing details → save the data locally → generate a comparison report in a file.

And more while running on your local device.

But now there is one important question:

How does an agent remember so many things to perform all these tasks?

Basically, how is memory being managed for OpenClaw’s AI Agents?

Surprisingly, OpenClaw solves this in a very simple way.

It uses structured Markdown files to provide memory:

• USER.md → who you are

• IDENTITY.md → who the agent is

• SOUL.md → behavioral rules

• TOOLS.md → what it can access

• HEARTBEAT.md → how and when it connects to services

So, basically Agents can continuously refer these markdown files for reference.

Moreover, Both the user and the agent can edit them.

Well, there are many security issues here but this architecture definitely takes AI agents one level up.

Do you agree?

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