Skip to content
github-actions[bot] edited this page Jul 26, 2026 · 4 revisions

๐Ÿง  Story Memory

How Formamorph remembers a long story โ€” and how you can change what it remembers.


Why Memory Exists

An AI model can only hold so much text at once. A story that runs 50 turns doesn't fit, so something has to give. Formamorph's answer is to keep the recent turns word-for-word and carry older turns as short memories instead.

Layer What It Is
๐Ÿ” Recent turns The last few turns, sent exactly as written. Their full prose is what keeps the story's voice consistent.
๐Ÿ“Œ Memories Everything older, compressed to a sentence each. The story writes these itself, one per turn.
๐Ÿ—‘๏ธ Let Go Memories the story judged not worth carrying โ€” the errand you already finished, the door you already opened.

That last step is the important one: more memory is not better memory. A recap stuffed with everything that ever happened crowds out the part that matters, and the story starts repeating itself. Memories are pruned deliberately.

The Memory Tab

Open the side panel's Memory tab during play to see the whole ledger. Faded, struck-through lines are the ones the story let go.

  • ๐Ÿ“Œ Pin a memory to force it to stay.
  • ๐Ÿšซ Forget a memory to force it out.
  • โ†บ Clear the pin to hand the decision back to the story.

Memories under the Recent divider are still riding word-for-word, so your pin on one of them starts mattering only once it ages out.

The Memory Manager

Manage Memories opens the full editor.

Action What It Does
โœ๏ธ Edit Rewrite a memory in your own words. Your version is always kept โ€” the story doesn't get to drop something you wrote.
๐Ÿ”„ Rewrite Have the story summarize that turn again, if the first attempt missed the point.
โž• Add Memory Write a memory for something that never happened in a turn: a standing fact, a promise, a detail you want carried. Yours are always kept and never judged.
๐Ÿ—‘๏ธ Delete Remove a memory. Switch the filter to Deleted to bring it back.
โ†ฉ๏ธ Revert Put an edited memory back to the story's own wording.

Search and the filter chips โ€” Verbatim ยท Summary ยท Held ยท Let Go ยท Edited ยท Custom ยท Deleted โ€” make a long story's ledger navigable. The first three name the form the story holds a memory in, and no memory is ever two of them at once. The Memory tab carries a short version of the same chips.

Tip

Nothing here is destructive. The story's own summary is always preserved underneath whatever you write, so every change is reversible โ€” and Reset All My Changes puts the whole ledger back the way the story had it.

Kept vs Sent

Being kept and being sent are different things.

Kept is a standing verdict โ€” the story judged this memory worth carrying, or you pinned it. Sent is about one turn: with Semantic Memory on, the kept pool is ranked against what you just did, and only the most relevant handful actually rides. A long story keeps far more memories than any single turn carries.

Row Means
Left accent bar Reached the story on the last turn
Plain Remembered โ€” just held back this turn
Struck through The story let this one go

The three forms a memory can be in:

Chip The story hasโ€ฆ
Verbatim The real text โ€” a recent turn, or one Scene Recall brought back whole
Summary The compressed line you're reading, and nothing more
Held Nothing this turn. Still remembered, waiting to become relevant again

A memory Scene Recall sent back as its full original prose is accented too, and tagged Scene in the Manager โ€” the story saw far more than the one-line summary you're reading. The Verbatim filter collects those along with the recent turns still riding word-for-word: both mean the story has the real text, not a compression of it.

Note

Nothing is marked until a turn has run. A freshly loaded save shows no accents rather than replaying an old turn's selection. Memories under the Recent divider are never marked โ€” they ride word-for-word regardless, which the divider already tells you.

When Each Memory Happened

With Measured Clock on, every memory carries its place in the story's own time:

Day 3, evening โ€” two days ago

Both readings sit together on purpose. Day 3, evening tells you where in the story you were; two days ago tells you how far back that is. Working out one from the other is a small tax you'd pay on every line, and the AI reads the exact same stamp for exactly this reason.

The character panel's clock reads the same way โ€” Day 1, morning rather than an elapsed-hours count.

Recent Memories moments ago, earlier today
Your Own Memories Stamped at the moment you anchored them
Times of Day Coarse โ€” dawn, morning, midday, afternoon, evening, night. Never a clock reading.

Note

Nothing is stamped while Measured Clock is off. Without it every turn costs a flat hour whatever happened in it, so a date would really just be a turn count wearing a costume. Switch it on partway through a story and the earlier turns are dated at that flat hour โ€” roughly wrong in scale, but still in the right order.

Both settings live under Settings โ†’ Generation โ†’ Memory. Measured Clock decides whether time is measured at all; Time in Memory decides whether the AI is told.

Where the clock starts

Knowing how far each turn moves is only half of it โ€” the clock also has to start in the right place. Every story used to open at eight in the morning, so a world written to begin at a midnight vigil or a supper table was wrong from its first line, and stayed wrong by the same amount forever.

With Measured Clock on, the game reads your opening scene once and sets the clock to match it. A story that opens on lamps and a cold watch starts at night; one that opens on morning rounds starts in the morning.

When it runs Once, on the opening turn, alongside the rest of it
What it reads Your opening scene โ€” not the world description
If it can't tell Falls back to morning, exactly as before
Existing stories Never re-dated โ€” see below
Re-rolling the opening Read again, so a rewritten opening keeps its own clock

Important

Turning Measured Clock on partway through a story does not change when that story began. The opening scene is long gone by then, and re-dating it would move every stamp you've already collected. Stories started before this existed keep the clock they have.

Edit how it judges a scene under Settings โ†’ Prompts โ†’ Opening, next to Clock.

Memories vs Notes

Both travel with the story, but they answer different questions.

Memories Notes
Answer What already happened What's true right now
Written by The story (you can edit) You
Changes over time Yes โ€” they age and get pruned No โ€” they stay until you change them
Good for A promise made, a fight won, a secret learned Who you're pretending to be, what you're carrying, your current goal

If the story keeps forgetting something that should always hold, that belongs in Notes. If it forgot something that happened, that's a memory โ€” pin it, or write it yourself.

Turning Memory Off

Settings โ†’ Memory Summaries controls whether the story writes memories at all. With it off, the oldest turns simply drop away as the story outgrows its context, and nothing is carried forward in their place.

Memories you wrote by hand still ride even with the setting off โ€” they're yours, not the story's.

Clone this wiki locally