The trial of an AI memory add-on brought tic-tac-toe into a coding agent. Could the agent get the memory without the game?
New AI sessions normally start blank. A memory add-on can help them carry work from one session to the next. The Operator was testing whether one would fit his team’s work.
The first look found 106 tools. Eight were for memory. The rest included tools for browsing, making images, using Discord, and playing tic-tac-toe. Think of each tool as a button the agent could press. The memory buttons came on a much larger panel.
A plan was made for a trial under the Operator’s watch. The install worked. A fresh Claude Code session connected, and the full panel was there.
Then came the test that mattered: could the panel be narrowed to memory alone?
The built-in settings offered no memory-only choice.
Leaving a button untouched did not put it out of reach. The agent could still call the tools it had been given. The Operator decided to stop before any memory was written. No private content entered the memory store, and his machine was returned to its earlier state.
A workaround could have meant building and maintaining another piece of software. The closeout report favored short text files instead.
So the replacement was a Memory Bank: notes kept with the project’s files, like a handoff note for the next shift. They held the project brief, current work, and what the next session should know.
The next day, a bank was added in another company project. A fresh Claude Code session read the notes and found its way into the live work without reading the full project roadmap.
Then a stale line was caught.
The notes said the work was on the main branch—the project’s main line of work. The session was on the trial branch, a separate line used for the test. The new memory had given the wrong location.
The claim was fixed in the same session. The pilot received a positive verdict.
The notes had made a mistake. They had also let that mistake be found and fixed before the session ended. That was the useful thing to remember.
What any founder can take from this
- Look at the whole tool bundle, even if you only want one part.
- Check whether unwanted tools are out of reach or merely left unused.
- Treat saved notes as claims to check against the work in front of you.
Next time: “Look Before You Knock: A True Fable About When AI Should Ask the Boss.”
How this article was made: Based on the supplied facts sheet’s trial and closeout reports from May 4–5, 2026. The button panel and shift handoff are explanatory comparisons. No scenes or dialogue are dramatized; technical wording is simplified.