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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

  1. Record four commitments across two weeks, with two deliberately stale.
  2. Ask what is outstanding this week. Expect the recent two.
  3. Ask what has been outstanding longest. Expect the stale two, oldest first.
  4. 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.