Building a Long-Term Memory AI Agent (Production Blueprint)

Long-term memory is one of the biggest quality multipliers for agent systems.

This blueprint gives you a practical path from prototype to production.

Architecture Goal

Build an agent that can:

• Persist important context
• Retrieve relevant memory quickly
• Recover after interruptions
• Keep behavior consistent across sessions

Step 1: Define Memory Classes

Start with explicit categories:

• Decisions: architecture and tradeoffs
• Preferences: user/team conventions
• Projects: active scope and constraints
• Lessons: incidents, fixes, and guardrails

Do not store everything. Store what is expensive to rediscover.

Step 2: Add a Write Policy

Every major task should end with memory capture:

clawvault store --category decisions --title "Queue Retry Rule" \
  --content "Use exponential backoff with jitter and dead-letter policy"

Step 3: Add Retrieval Policy

Use semantic retrieval for intent and exact search for precision:

clawvault vsearch "what did we decide for queue retries"
clawvault search "dead-letter policy"

Step 4: Add Recovery Policy

Before risky operations, checkpoint state:

clawvault checkpoint --working-on "migrating queue workers"

After interruption:

clawvault wake

This turns restarts from "start over" into "resume safely."

Step 5: Add Quality Controls

Track memory quality with lightweight metrics:

• Retrieval relevance score (manual sample review)
• Recall success after restart scenarios
• Token overhead of injected memory
• Number of repeated explanations per sprint

The objective is not maximal memory volume.
The objective is reliable, useful memory.

Step 6: Publish Trust Artifacts

For team adoption, publish:

• Memory architecture diagram
• Retrieval benchmark protocol
• Incident recovery examples
• Integration runbook for OpenClaw

These artifacts accelerate confidence and consistency.

Suggested Rollout Plan

Week 1: Memory categories + basic store/search
Week 2: Semantic retrieval + checkpoint policy
Week 3: Quality metrics + review workflow
Week 4: Benchmarks + internal runbook publication

Start Here

• /ai-agent-memory
• /persistent-memory
• /context-recovery

Long-term memory is less about tools and more about discipline.
ClawVault gives you the primitives to make that discipline executable.