Memories Design - Separating Permanent Rules from Local Recall

Codex Memories carry stable preferences, recurring workflows, technology choices, and known pitfalls from earlier threads into future work.

Responsibility boundaries

Information	Owner
Mandatory approval rule	AGENTS.md or shared/rules/
Project specification	Versioned project document
Stable personal preference	Memories
Repeated lesson from recent work	Memory, then promoted after review if broadly useful

Enablement and Storage

Enable Memories in Codex settings or user configuration.

[features]
memories = true

Generated state is stored under ~/.codex/memories/ by default. Codex can skip short or active sessions and updates memory in the background, so changes may not appear immediately.

Per-Thread Controls

In the Codex app and TUI, /memories controls whether the current thread reads existing memories and whether it can contribute to future memories. Disable generation for sensitive customer data or temporary investigations.

Promote Memory into Rules

Codex attempts to redact secrets, but inspect generated files before sharing a Codex home directory. Repeated team-wide guidance should move from personal memory into shared/rules/, a Skill, or a specification.

Next, Harness testing and validation detects drift across the complete configuration.

See the references for the external specifications and background sources used on this page.[1][2]

References

1. OpenAI, Codex documentation
2. OpenAI, OpenAI API documentation