File-Based Markdown Memory Pattern overview

The canonical agent memory pattern: markdown files in a project or user directory, loaded at session start and optionally updated at session end. Used by Claude Code (MEMORY.md), Cline (.cline/memory/), Roo Code (.roo/memory/), and OpenClaw (SOUL.md + MEMORY.md). The pattern is portable (any agent that reads files can use it), version-controllable (git tracks changes), inspectable (humans can read and edit), and composable (multiple files can be combined). The primary limitation is retrieval — file-hierarchy traversal does not scale to large memory corpora, and there is no semantic search without additional tooling.