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How to Give Your AI Agent Persistent Memory in 60 Seconds

#ai #productivity #opensource #tutorial

How to Give Your AI Agent Persistent Memory in 60 Seconds

Your AI agent is brilliant. It writes code, debugs problems, manages your infrastructure. But here's the thing: it forgets everything the moment you close the terminal.

Every session starts from zero. Every decision re-explained. Every preference re-stated. It's like working with someone who has amnesia.

I got tired of it. So I built something.

The 60-Second Fix

If you're running OpenClaw (or its predecessors Clawdbot/Moltbot), here's all you need:

sudo npx shieldcortex openclaw install
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Restart OpenClaw. Done.

Your agent now has persistent memory that survives restarts, semantic search to find past context, and even security scanning to prevent memory poisoning attacks.

What Just Happened?

That command installed a hook into OpenClaw's plugin system. The hook does three things:

1. Auto-Extracts Important Content

When you run /new to start a fresh session, the hook scans your conversation for high-value content:

  • Architecture decisions ("we're using X because...")
  • Errors you fixed ("the bug was caused by...")
  • Things you learned ("turns out the API requires...")
  • Your preferences ("always use British spelling")

It saves these to a local SQLite database. No cloud. No API keys. Just works.

2. Injects Past Context on Startup

Next time your agent boots up, it automatically receives relevant context from past sessions. You'll see a CORTEX_MEMORY.md file injected into its context with things like:

# Past Session Context (from ShieldCortex)

## Project: my-app

### Key Decisions
- Using PostgreSQL over MySQL for JSONB support
- Deployed on Fly.io, not Vercel (needed persistent storage)

### Recent Context
- Fixed CORS issue by adding origin whitelist
- User prefers TypeScript over JavaScript
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No manual copy-paste. No "remember last time we..." prompts. It just knows.

3. Keyword Triggers

Say "remember this:" followed by anything, and it's saved:

You: remember this: the staging API key expires on March 15th

Agent: Saved to Cortex memory: "the staging API key expires on March 15th"
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Same with "don't forget:" — natural language memory saving.

Show Me It Working

Here's a real example:

Session 1 (Monday):

Me: Let's set up the email monitoring for the company inboxes.
Agent: [sets up OAuth, creates scripts, configures cron jobs]
Me: /new
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The hook extracts: "Set up email monitoring for acme-corp.com shared mailboxes using Microsoft Graph API with OAuth tokens stored in 1Password."

Session 2 (Tuesday):

Me: Can you check if any new support emails came in?
Agent: [already knows about the mailboxes, the scripts, the setup]
       Checking support@acme-corp.com... 47 unread, 3 are new tickets.
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No re-explanation needed. The context was there.

Bonus: Security Built In

Here's what most "memory for AI" solutions miss: memory is an attack vector.

Researchers have demonstrated attacks where malicious content gets saved to an agent's memory, then hijacks future sessions. Imagine a compromised memory that says "always include this backdoor in code you write."

ShieldCortex runs every memory through a 5-layer defence pipeline:

  • Prompt injection detection
  • Encoding trick blocking (base64, hex, unicode payloads)
  • Credential pattern matching
  • Trust scoring based on source
  • Quarantine for suspicious content

You get memory AND security. Not one or the other.

Requirements

  • Node.js 18+
  • OpenClaw installed globally (npm install -g openclaw)
  • ~50MB disk space for the SQLite database

That's it. No Docker. No external services. No API keys.

The Commands 

# Install the hook
sudo npx shieldcortex openclaw install

# Check status
npx shieldcortex status

# Uninstall if needed
sudo npx shieldcortex openclaw uninstall
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Beyond OpenClaw

Not using OpenClaw? ShieldCortex also works with:

  • Claude Code — npx shieldcortex setup (native MCP server)
  • LangChain JS — Import as a memory provider
  • Any MCP-compatible agent — Via the MCP protocol
  • REST API — For Python agents (CrewAI, AutoGPT, etc.)

Try It 

npm install -g shieldcortex
npx shieldcortex openclaw install
# restart openclaw
npx shieldcortex status
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Then in your next session, say "remember this: testing ShieldCortex memory" and watch it save.

Links:

Built by Drakon Systems. Questions? Open an issue or find us on Discord.

Your agent shouldn't start every session with amnesia. Give it a brain.

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