Journal · Developers
Portable AI memory: mostly a claim about export
Memory is becoming the thing AI products compete on. Portability is becoming the thing they claim. One of these is easy to verify and the other is easy to assert.
What makes AI memory portable? Being able to export the full record, in a documented open format, readable without the vendor’s software, on request and without negotiation. Everything else is a statement of intent.
As assistants accumulate history, the history becomes the reason to stay. That is a legitimate way to build a product and an obvious way to trap people, and the difference between the two is entirely in the exit.
Four questions that settle it
- What exactly comes out? The full structured record, or a transcript dump? A transcript is not a record: it lacks the assumptions, the confidence, the review outcomes.
- In what format? Documented and open, or a proprietary blob that requires their reader?
- How do you get it? A button, or an email to support and a wait?
- Is it complete? Including derived structure, or only what you typed in?
Ask for the export before you start, not after you have two years in the system.
Why structure matters more than volume
A year of conversation logs is a large file and nearly useless: nothing distinguishes the decision from the chatter, and nothing records what you believed at the time. A year of structured entries is small and valuable, because each one carries the call, the options, the assumption, the confidence, the review date, and what actually happened.
Where the residual lock-in sits
Being straight about it: even with a clean export, the value of a record depends on something being able to read and use it well. Portability of the file is real and achievable. Portability of the benefit depends on what you move to. Anyone promising more than that is describing an intention.
Five Peers editorial note. Sources named in the text.
A structured record, in an open format, on request.
Compose my board