The daily memory system provides temporal, append-only memory for AI agents. While MEMORY.md holds persistent knowledge that every session needs, daily memory captures what happened — session activity, investigation notes, decisions made on a specific day. Daily files are never auto-cleared and form a searchable archive of agent history.

Overview

Daily memory has six components:

1. DailyMemory service — filesystem storage with CRUD, search, and date-range queries
2. DailyMemoryTask — AI-powered system task that synthesizes daily summaries and cleans MEMORY.md
3. DailyMemoryAbilities — WordPress 6.9 Abilities API registration
4. AgentDailyMemoryDirective — opt-in injection at Priority 35 for agents that enable it via agent_config.daily_memory (chat + pipeline contexts). Since 0.71.0; replaces DailyMemorySelectorDirective.
5. AgentDailyMemory tool — AI chat tool for agent self-service
6. CLI and REST endpoints — human and programmatic access

File Storage

Location: the agent’s daily-memory directory below Data Machine’s files root, grouped by year and month.

Files follow the WordPress Media Library date convention: year directory, month directory, then one markdown file per day named by the two-digit day.

agents/chubes-bot/daily/
  2026/
    02/
      15.md
      24.md
      25.md
    03/
      01.md
      16.md

DailyMemory Service

Source: inc/Core/FilesRepository/DailyMemory.php Since: v0.32.0

The DailyMemory class handles all file operations. It accepts user_id and agent_id constructor parameters for multi-agent scoping — the directory is resolved through DirectoryManager.

// Default (current agent context)
$daily = new DailyMemory();

// Scoped to a specific agent
$daily = new DailyMemory(user_id: 0, agent_id: 42);

CRUD Operations

Listing and Search

Path Helpers

DailyMemoryTask

Source: inc/Engine/AI/System/Tasks/DailyMemoryTask.php Since: v0.32.0

An AI-powered system task that runs daily via Action Scheduler. It has two phases:

Phase 1: Activity Synthesis

Gathers the day’s activity from Data Machine (completed jobs and chat sessions) and uses AI to synthesize a concise daily memory entry.

Data sources:

• datamachine_jobs — pipeline and system jobs created on the target date (job_id, pipeline_id, flow_id, source, label, status)
• datamachine_chat_sessions — chat sessions created on the target date (session_id, title, context)

Process:

1. Query jobs and chat sessions for the target date
2. Format as structured context with ## Jobs completed on YYYY-MM-DD and ## Chat sessions on YYYY-MM-DD sections
3. Send to AI with the daily_summary prompt template
4. Append the AI-generated summary to the day’s daily memory file

If no DM activity occurred (empty context), Phase 1 is skipped. Phase 2 still runs because most agent work happens via external tools (e.g. Kimaki sessions) that don’t create DM jobs.

Phase 2: MEMORY.md Cleanup

Reads the full MEMORY.md file and uses AI to split it into persistent knowledge (stays) and session-specific content (archived to the daily file). This keeps MEMORY.md lean for the context window budget.

Process:

1. Read MEMORY.md via AgentMemory service
2. Skip if within budget — if file size ≤ AgentMemory::MAX_FILE_SIZE (8192 bytes / 8 KB), no cleanup needed
3. Send to AI with the memory_cleanup prompt template
4. Parse AI response into ===PERSISTENT=== and ===ARCHIVED=== sections
5. Safety check — verify the new content isn’t suspiciously small:
   • If file is >2x over budget: allow reduction down to half the target size (4 KB minimum)
   • If file is near budget: don’t allow reduction below 10% of original size
6. Write cleaned content back to MEMORY.md
7. Append archived content to the daily file under ### Archived from MEMORY.md

Failure handling: Cleanup failures are logged but never fail the overall job. The daily summary (Phase 1) is already written. Key safety rules:

• If file is >2x over budget: allow reduction down to half the target size (4 KB minimum)
• If file is near budget: don’t allow reduction below 10% of original size

Editable Prompts

DailyMemoryTask defines two customizable prompts via getPromptDefinitions():

daily_summary — Synthesizes the day’s DM activity into a concise entry.

• If file is >2x over budget: allow reduction down to half the target size (4 KB minimum)
• If file is near budget: don’t allow reduction below 10% of original size

memory_cleanup — Splits MEMORY.md into persistent vs. session-specific content.

• Never wipe MEMORY.md if the AI response can’t be parsed
• Never write if the persistent section is empty
• Never write if the new content is suspiciously small (safety threshold check)

Prompts can be overridden via the System Tasks admin tab or programmatically:

SystemTask::setPromptOverride('daily_memory_generation', 'memory_cleanup', 'Your custom prompt...');

Scheduling

Scheduling is registered separately from the task handler via the datamachine_recurring_schedules filter in SystemAgentServiceProvider. All AS plumbing runs through the shared RecurringScheduler primitive (see recurring-scheduler.md).

• Variable: {{context}} — gathered activity from jobs and chat sessions

Upgrading sites have any pending action under the pre-refactor hook (datamachine_system_agent_daily_memory) unscheduled during the first action_scheduler_init reconciliation.

Task Metadata

[
    'label'           => 'Daily Memory',
    'description'     => 'AI-generated daily summary of activity and automatic MEMORY.md cleanup',
    'setting_key'     => 'daily_memory_enabled',
    'default_enabled' => false,
    'supports_run'    => true,
    // trigger / trigger_type are resolved by TaskRegistry from the matching
    // schedule in RecurringScheduleRegistry — the task is a pure handler.
]

Schedule Registration

add_filter( 'datamachine_recurring_schedules', function ( $schedules ) {
    $schedules['daily_memory_generation'] = [
        'task_type'          => 'daily_memory_generation',
        'interval'           => 'daily',
        'enabled_setting'    => 'daily_memory_enabled',
        'default_enabled'    => false,
        'label'              => 'Daily at midnight UTC',
        'first_run_callback' => 'strtotime',
        'first_run_arg'      => 'tomorrow midnight',
    ];
    return $schedules;
} );

DailyMemoryAbilities

Source: inc/Abilities/DailyMemoryAbilities.php Since: v0.32.0

Five abilities registered under the datamachine category:

All abilities accept user_id and agent_id parameters for multi-agent scoping. Write and delete operations respect the daily_memory_enabled setting — they return an error if daily memory is disabled.

// Read today's daily memory
wp_execute_ability('datamachine/daily-memory-read', ['date' => '2026-03-16']);

// Append a note
wp_execute_ability('datamachine/daily-memory-write', [
    'content' => '- Deployed v0.41.0 to production',
    'date'    => '2026-03-16',
    'mode'    => 'append',
]);

// Search for mentions of "homeboy"
wp_execute_ability('datamachine/search-daily-memory', [
    'query' => 'homeboy',
    'from'  => '2026-03-01',
    'to'    => '2026-03-31',
]);

AgentDailyMemoryDirective

Source: inc/Engine/AI/Directives/AgentDailyMemoryDirective.php Since: v0.71.0 Priority: 35 Contexts: chat, pipeline

Opt-in directive that reads recent daily archive files directly from disk and injects each one as its own system_text block into the AI context. Replaces the former DailyMemorySelectorDirective + per-flow flow_config.daily_memory config.

Opt-in per agent

Daily memory injection is off by default for every agent. A stateless agent (alt-text generator, wiki builder, one-shot pipeline worker) should never carry what happened yesterday in its context — session continuity matters for personal assistants, not for purpose-built workers.

Enable per agent via agent_config:

{
  "daily_memory": {
    "enabled":     true,
    "recent_days": 3
  }
}

How it reads

• Variables: {{memory_content}} (current MEMORY.md), {{date}} (target date), {{max_size}} (recommended limit, e.g. "8 KB")

Priority in directive chain

Priority 10 — Plugin Core (agent identity)
Priority 20 — Core Memory Files (SOUL.md, USER.md, MEMORY.md, etc.)
Priority 35 — Agent Daily Memory (THIS; chat + pipeline, opt-in)
Priority 40 — Pipeline Memory Files
Priority 45 — Flow Memory Files
Priority 50 — Pipeline System Prompt
Priority 60 — Pipeline Context Files
Priority 70 — Tool Definitions
Priority 80 — Site Context

For precise historical lookups

The directive only injects recent days on a rolling window. Anything beyond recent_days, or any specific date / date range / month query, should be served by the agent_daily_memory tool on demand — it covers every former selector mode with more precision than a pre-configured dropdown ever did.

AgentDailyMemory Tool

Source: inc/Engine/AI/Tools/Global/AgentDailyMemory.php Tool ID: agent_daily_memory Contexts: chat, pipeline, standalone

An AI chat tool that lets agents manage their own daily memory during conversations. Always available (no external configuration required).

Tool Schema

Delegation

The tool delegates to WordPress Abilities:

Usage Guidance (from tool description)

Use for session activity, temporal events, and work logs. Daily memory captures WHAT HAPPENED — persistent knowledge belongs in agent_memory (MEMORY.md) instead.

REST API

Use for session activity, temporal events, and work logs. Daily memory captures WHAT HAPPENED — persistent knowledge belongs in agent_memory (MEMORY.md) instead.

Use for session activity, temporal events, and work logs. Daily memory captures WHAT HAPPENED — persistent knowledge belongs in agent_memory (MEMORY.md) instead.

Source: inc/Api/AgentFiles.php

Daily memory endpoints are registered alongside other agent file endpoints:

CLI

All endpoints require manage_options capability. The PUT endpoint accepts content as a JSON body parameter or raw body and always uses mode: 'write' (replace). An optional user_id query parameter enables multi-agent scoping.

# List all daily memory files
wp datamachine memory daily list [--agent=<slug>] [--user=<id>] [--format=table|json]

# Read a daily file (defaults to today)
wp datamachine memory daily read [YYYY-MM-DD] [--agent=<slug>]

# Write (replace) a daily file
wp datamachine memory daily write [YYYY-MM-DD] <content> [--agent=<slug>]

# Append to a daily file
wp datamachine memory daily append [YYYY-MM-DD] <content> [--agent=<slug>]

# Delete a daily file
wp datamachine memory daily delete <YYYY-MM-DD> [--agent=<slug>]

# Search across daily files
wp datamachine memory daily search <query> [--from=YYYY-MM-DD] [--to=YYYY-MM-DD] [--agent=<slug>]

Note: There is no REST search endpoint for daily memory. Search is only available via the AI tool and CLI.

Delegation Architecture

Source: inc/Cli/Commands/MemoryCommand.php

AI Chat Tool                  REST API                CLI
     |                           |                     |
     v                           v                     |
WP Abilities API          DailyMemoryAbilities         |
     |                           |                     |
     v                           v                     v
DailyMemoryAbilities      DailyMemory service    DailyMemory service
     |                           |                     |
     v                           v                     v
DailyMemory service     (same filesystem)        (same filesystem)
     |
     v
agents/{slug}/daily/YYYY/MM/DD.md

All commands resolve agent scoping via AgentResolver (from --agent flag) with fallback to --user.

Source Files