Memory forgets. A ledger keeps receipts.
agent memory was step one. this is step two.
Notes files and built-in agent memories help one agent recall one chat. A team needs more: decisions a person confirmed, with proof, served to every agent, and checked against the code that ships.
retries… 3? maybe 5?
someone said the bank minds
CHECKED ON every pull request (GitHub App)
One decision. Two outcomes.
- MON · CLAUDE CODE
The team lead says: never retry a charge more than 3 times.
It lands in that tool's memory, on one laptop.
- WED · CURSOR
Another engineer's agent opens billing/retry.ts.
It never saw Monday's chat.
- WED · PULL REQUEST
maxRetries goes from 3 to 5.
The review looks fine. Nothing checks it against Monday.
- FRI · PRODUCTION
The bank flags the account.
Someone goes looking for the old chat.
- MON · CLAUDE CODE
The team lead says: never retry a charge more than 3 times.
ALIGN proposes it with the exact quote. A person confirms it as AL-42.
- WED · CURSOR
Another engineer's agent opens billing/retry.ts.
It asks through MCP and gets AL-42, with its receipt.
- WED · PULL REQUEST
If maxRetries still goes to 5…
One comment on the PR: the decision, the quote, who confirmed it.
- FRI · PRODUCTION
Nothing to fix.
The decision held, and anyone can check why.
Recall is not the same as a record.
| Question | Agent memory | ALIGN |
|---|---|---|
| Who wrote it? | The model, summarising a chat. | A model proposes it. A person confirms it. |
| Where is the proof? | There isn't any. It says what it says. | An exact quote at an exact place: the session lines, the commit, the PR. |
| Who gets it? | Whichever tools load the notes, with no record of who agreed. | Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any MCP agent, for the whole team. |
| What if the code moves on? | Nothing notices. | With the GitHub App, every pull request is checked. A conflict gets one comment with the receipt. |
| What if it was wrong? | It is quietly overwritten, or it lingers. | A correction is a new revision with a reason. The history stays. |
| Does it outlive the tool? | It lives wherever that tool keeps it. | Ids like AL-42 sit in your commits. Export everything as Markdown or JSON. |
It isn't either-or.
ALIGN is neutral: your harness's memory is one of its sources, not a competitor. Keep your notes files and your agent's memory. ALIGN adds what they can't: the receipt, the person who confirmed it, and, with the GitHub App, the check on every pull request.