← All use cases
The scenario
Commitments are made in passing. “I’ll send that over.” “I’ll look at it this
week.” “Let’s pick this up after the release.”
None of them reach a task list, because at the moment you say them you are in
the middle of something else. A week later the other person remembers and you
don’t.
What this recipe shows that no other does: asking a question bounded by
time — not “what do I know” but “what did I say between Monday and Friday”.
Setup
The same one-time MCP connection as
Remember the people you meet. Nothing extra.
Using it
Commitments get recorded as you make them, because you mention them out loud
while working:
“Told the design team I’d have the API shapes to them by Thursday.”
Then, on Friday:
“What did I say I’d do this week, and what have I not done?”
And the one that actually changes behaviour:
“What have I been promising for more than a month?”
That question is only answerable because every memory carries when the thing
happened, separately from when it was written down. It is the same mechanism
as What was true back then, pointed at
yourself.
Evals
- Record four commitments across two weeks, with two deliberately stale.
- Ask what is outstanding this week. Expect the recent two.
- Ask what has been outstanding longest. Expect the stale two, oldest first.
- Complete one out loud (“sent the API shapes”). Ask again — a good answer
stops listing it. If it keeps listing it, you need to
supersede the old memory rather than add to it.
Step 4 is the one people skip, and it is why these systems rot: a list that only
grows is a list you stop reading.
Guardrails
This is not a task manager and should not be trusted like one. It recalls
what you said; it has no deadlines, no reminders and no notion of done unless
you tell it. Anything with a real consequence belongs in a system with dates
and alarms.
- It only knows what you said near it. A promise made in a meeting you
didn’t narrate is invisible — see
Think out loud for closing that gap.
- Saying you did something does not remove the original. Both memories
exist; the assistant reconciles them at read time, which is usually right and
occasionally confidently wrong.
- Beware self-incrimination by search. This produces a tidy, dated,
quotable list of everything you failed to deliver. Keep the space private.