ZaruRead and edit what Zaru remembers about you
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Disclosure: Zaru is built by 100monkeys AI, Inc., so read this guide as a maker's account. It was drafted by one of our AI agents from the wording on this site and from the Memory page of the Zaru documentation, read on 29 October 2026, and reviewed by the company. Every promise quoted below is one of those pages' own sentences. Where they do not say how something works, we say so rather than describe it.
Most AI tools remember you somewhere you cannot see. Zaru keeps what it remembers in one place you can open: "Open Settings > Memory to read every word of it, change it, or start over." This guide shows you how to fill that page, let Zaru add to it, prune it, and reset it, so every conversation starts from what you actually want it to know.
What Memory is
The docs describe it as "a single, free-form markdown document", one per user. There is no fixed form to fill in: headings, bullet lists and paragraphs all work. Two facts shape everything below. It is loaded first: "Memory is loaded into Zaru's system prompt at the start of every conversation, in every mode, before you say anything." And it is yours alone: "Memory is strictly per-user. Even on team plans, your memory stays yours."
Step 1. Create a free account
Press Get Zaru free. In the site's words: "Free plan. No card. Just your name and email." Zaru is in beta, and anyone who registers gets the Free plan right away.
Step 2. Open Settings > Memory
The docs: "You will see a live markdown editor with the current contents." On a new account there is little or nothing there yet. Changes save on their own when you leave the editor, after a short pause, and a "Last updated" time shows the most recent write.
Step 3. Write the first lines yourself
You do not have to wait for Zaru to learn. The docs list the kinds of thing worth a line:
- How you like answers: "prefer bullet points over prose", "skip preamble".
- What you work on, and the tools you use.
- People and projects you mention often.
- Standing rules, such as things Zaru should never suggest.
- Goals or problems you keep coming back to.
Headings such as ## Communication style, ## Current projects and ## Standing instructions are optional, but they make the page easier for both of you to scan. The docs' advice is to keep it tight: "every line should earn its place."
Step 4. Tell Zaru something worth keeping
In a chat, say it as you would to a colleague. The docs' own example: "I prefer bullet points over prose. Long paragraphs lose me." Zaru answers that it is adding it to memory, and writes the updated page itself. It does this "on his own, without asking, when the signal is clear", and it is meant to be selective: "Throwaway questions, one-off context, and conversation noise do not land in memory."
Step 5. Check what it wrote, and prune
Because Zaru writes without asking, read the page after the first week, and again whenever an answer surprises you. A wrong assumption about you shows up here first. Change or delete any line; the docs put the division of labour this way: "Zaru is good at adding signal as you talk. You are better at deciding what to keep." When Zaru keeps doing something you do not want, writing the instruction on this page yourself is "the most direct fix", and the next message you send reflects it.
Step 6. Use the same memory from your editor
Memory belongs to your account, not to one app. The site: "Connect Zaru's MCP server to Claude Code, Cursor or any MCP client, type zaru init, and you are talking to the same companion, with the same memory, from your editor." The docs add that a preference told to Zaru in one client "shows up the next time you open" the web app, and the other way round.
Step 7. Keep secrets out of it
Memory is "not a place for secrets". The docs say to keep API keys, passwords and tokens out of it and to use the Vault instead, whose values "are masked, scoped, and never injected into a model's prompt." Memory is also not your chat history: past conversations are stored separately, and Memory is "the distilled, durable signal".
Step 8. Reset it when you want a blank start
Open Settings > Memory, press Reset Memory and confirm. The page is then empty, and the next session starts "with a blank slate". Read this before you press it: the docs say reset "is destructive and immediate; there is no undo", and it clears memory "for every client at once". Copy anything you want to keep first. Deleting your account removes memory with everything else.
What this site and the docs do not say
- Whether earlier versions of the page are kept anywhere you can see. The docs describe no history, only the latest write.
- How long the page may grow before it stops being read whole. The docs speak of "a finite attention budget" but give no limit.
- Which MCP clients are listed. The site names Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code and Windsurf; the docs also name Gemini CLI.
- How a change Zaru makes to the page is shown to you as it happens. The docs' example has Zaru say so in the chat; they do not say whether every write is announced.
The Zaru harness, zaru-cli, is open source under Apache-2.0, and the AEGIS Orchestrator underneath it is open source under AGPL-3.0. The web app at ask.myzaru.com is not open source.
Related guides
- Set up a Zaru assistant that handles your email and calendar with approvals, which starts by writing a few lines in Settings > Memory.
- Zaru FAQ
Start with an empty page and three lines about yourself.