AI memory should be a product state, not a prompt trick (opens in new tab)

I ran into a memory problem while building a reflective AI product. The easy version of AI memory is tempting: Save useful facts about the user. Put them back into the next prompt. Call it memory. That can work for low-risk personalization. It is probably fine if an assistant remembers that a repo uses pnpm, or that a user prefers short answers, or that a team calls its staging branch preview. But the problem changes when the user is bringing personal material into the product. In my case, th...