AI / ML
Institutional Memory
The accumulated knowledge about a brand's performance patterns, constraints, past decisions, and learned lessons that persists across all agent interactions and compounds over time. Unlike chat history (which is session-based), institutional memory captures durable facts: 'TikTok CAC is consistently above target,' 'Q4 Meta CPMs rise 40% by week 3 of November,' 'the founder prefers weekly Slack reports over email.' Its usefulness grows with the number of decision-outcome pairs recorded, which means it is thin early on and should not be presented as an advantage a new deployment already has.
Why it matters
It is the knowledge that normally leaves when a person does. Written down it survives; held in someone's head it does not.
In practice
Capture the decision and the outcome together. A record of what was decided without what happened teaches nothing.
Related terms