Why Do Local AI Agents Forget You?

Every local AI agent I built before this one had the same problem: restart the session, and it had no idea who I was. The fix wasn't a better model; it was treating memory as structured persistent data outside the context window, using memory, storage, and LLMs, all running locally. This post walks through exactly how I wired the full stack together, including the two silent gotchas that will quietly break things if you miss them. Picture this: you spend 10 minutes onboarding your local AI assis