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Memory Types: Facts vs. Preferences

OpsWorker memory stores two distinct kinds of entries. Choosing the right type controls how the entry can be shared and how the AI applies it.

Facts​

A fact is something objectively true about your environment, your team, or the way your systems operate. Facts are the kind of thing you'd write in a runbook one-liner: short, unambiguous, and useful as background context for anyone reasoning about the cluster.

Good fact examples​

  • "The checkout service is deployed in the payments namespace on the prod-us-east cluster."
  • "Team Payments owns all services prefixed with pay-."
  • "Database migrations only run during the maintenance window, 02:00–04:00 UTC."
  • "We never auto-scale the ingress-controller deployment — capacity is set manually."
  • "Pods stuck in Pending due to PVC issues should be investigated against the EBS storage class first."

Properties​

  • Can be created at personal, cluster, or organization scope.
  • Can be promoted to a wider scope (personal → cluster → organization).
  • Visible to anyone with access to the scope.
  • Loaded by the AI during investigations and chat for the relevant cluster or organization.

Preferences​

A preference is a personal directive about how the AI should communicate or behave with you specifically. Preferences shape style and approach — they don't describe the environment.

Good preference examples​

  • "Keep answers concise. Skip introductions."
  • "Always include the exact kubectl command, not just a description."
  • "Prefer pointing me to relevant logs over giving me a summary."
  • "Use ISO timestamps in UTC."
  • "Don't suggest restarting workloads without first ruling out a configuration cause."

Properties​

  • Personal scope only — preferences are never shared with teammates.
  • Loaded for every chat session you start.
  • Apply across all your clusters (preferences are not cluster-specific by default).

Choosing the Right Type​

QuestionType
Is this something every teammate would benefit from knowing?Fact
Is this about how I want the AI to write or behave?Preference
Could this become outdated when a person leaves the team?Fact (ownership facts), Preference (work-style preferences)
Would I want this in a runbook?Fact

What Memory Should NOT Hold​

Memory is for short, durable context. Avoid putting these into memory:

  • Live cluster state — pod counts, current resource usage. The AI fetches that fresh every time.
  • Long-form documentation — runbooks, postmortems, internal docs. Use Knowledge Sources instead.
  • Secrets or credentials — memory is not a vault.
  • Temporary task notes — memory persists; transient context belongs in the chat conversation.

Editing and Deleting​

Both facts and preferences can be edited or deleted from the AI Memory views in the portal:

  • My Memory — edit/delete your own entries
  • Cluster Memory — edit/delete cluster-shared facts (any user with cluster access)
  • Organization Memory — edit/delete org-wide facts (admins recommended)

When editing a memory entry, OpsWorker replaces the old entry with the new one (this is delete-then-create on the backend, so the entry ID changes after edit).

Next Steps​