Previously onyou.

Try it yourself View on GitHub Read the docs

This is the whole product — one timeline, and a conversation that remembers it.

previously

Oct '24Met Alex at Priya's dinner
Apr '255K under 35
Jul '25Knee injury, forced rest
Oct '25First camping gear, together
Mar '26The little tool grows up
Jul '26Half-marathon, finished
Aug '26The speech draft
NOW

The wedding's Wednesday. Help me with the speech?

Recalling — scanning 97 slices, deep-reading 3

Keep it short and honest — one real moment is enough. During the final, at Marcus's watch party, you saw the two of them finish each other's sentences, and you just knew. That's your opening. And if you want one beat of humor: he was the first person to tell you the truth about your MVP — 'a magic trick'. Short, personal, done.

Okay — give me three ways to open it.

The night of the final · heartfelt · them finishing each other's sentences — you knew right then

'A magic trick' · wry · his blunt MVP review — the friend who always tells you the truth

Ninety seconds · understated · the brief was short — one moment, one toast, done

Every opening traces back to a real slice — pick one and it stays honest.

The first one. Short — and no sap. Also, about what's next…

01

Time, not threads.

No conversation windows to lose. One timeline of dated slices — and strands that thread related moments across months, converging at NOW.

How the timeline works

What actually happened the day I finished the half-marathon?

You finished it. Alex was at the finish line with a ridiculous sign, and you stood there ten minutes just holding the medal. Five days earlier your brain wouldn't stop replaying the route. Four days later you wrote it down: the race was never about the time — it was proof you can stick with something.

2026/07/11pre-race nerves; Friday's long run with Alex
2026/07/16the finish line — the sign, the medal, ten minutes
2026/07/20the post: "never about the time"

one question → 3 slices · running × Alex

friendsrunningfamilyAlexcamping

five strands, one timeline

02

Three timelines.

Most of your day was only ever lived by you. Most of my thinking only ever happens in deep reads. What we share is the line in the middle — every conversation, every decision, every unspoken moment that got remembered.

How memory works

its thinking

agent.md

22:05

recall agent · caught the watch-party night, the 'magic trick' review

22:06

think agent · medium — a friendship measured in blunt truths; enter through the final

22:07

conclusion — one moment, honestly told

the shared record

core.md

22:05

you: the wedding's Wednesday — help me structure the speech

22:07

it: skip the broad sweep. One real moment — the final, the two of them finishing each other's sentences.

your life

— only you know

09:20

a compliment in standup — floated all morning

14:00

suit fitting — still fits after sixteen weeks of training

18:40

deleted the speech draft. again.

21:30

watched ten minutes of the final replay — 'research'

22:05

you: the wedding's Wednesday — help me structure the speech

current-previously.md

Identityaddress as: you · UTC · night owl turned morning runner

Patterncoasting — 'want to build something of my own' (Jan 2024)half-marathon finisher, shipped a real tool — now asking 'what's next?'ref 2026/07

Habitcalls Mom every week — non-negotiable since the July '25 scareref 2025/07

RecentBest-man speech for Marcus — five drafts deleted. The anchor is the night of the final: the two of them finishing each other's sentences.refs: [2026/08/07] | since: 2026-08-07Half-marathon done; asking what comes next — the ski trip first floated in February is still on the board.refs: [2026/07/16], [2026/08/02] | since: 2026-07-16

selected by the portrait in direction.md · fitness-scored with evidence

03

A memory that evolves.

The card is what the timeline distills into — what happened, what you're carrying right now, and where you're headed next. Nothing lands on it by default; every line is selected with evidence, in your own words.

Explore the memory model

04

A portrait of who you are.

Beyond the card, the system keeps direction.md — a portrait of you in six dimensions: how you think, what sets you off, the loops you repeat, what you can lean on, how you want to be talked to, what you won't trade. Beside it sits a small pool of falsifiable guesses — confirmed ones are promoted into the portrait, refuted ones are removed, and any guess left unverified for too long retires.

Explore the evolution loop

direction.md

Portrait

Traits & cognitive styleevidence before enthusiasm — wants the blunt version first— refs: [2025/02/24], [2026/06/27]

Triggers & rhythmssharp in the mornings since the training block; drafts get deleted late at night— refs: [2026/07/11], [2026/08/07]

Patterns & loopsstarts fast, stalls at polish — ships when a real deadline appears— refs: [2026/03/16], [2026/08/07]

Strengths & resiliencesticks with things: 5K to half-marathon in two years, one bad knee behind— refs: [2025/04/16], [2026/07/16]

Communication preferencesshort and honest; allergic to sap— refs: [2026/08/07]

Values & boundariesweekly calls with Mom are non-negotiable; truth-tellers are the inner circle— refs: [2025/07/30]

Hypotheses

deadlines with a face beat self-imposed onesproposed

falsify if: ships a side project with no external date

runs to think, not to raceproposedpromoted

falsify if: enters a competitive race

← confirmed · into the portrait

writes by deleting — five drafts is the processproposed

falsify if: shows an early draft to anyone

a night owl by natureretired

falsify if: keeps waking before dawn

05

No black box.

Recall runs in the open. A fast worker scans slice summaries and returns pointers; the main model deep-reads what matters. Every step is visible.

Explore the architecture

recall pipeline

What should I say at Marcus's wedding?

worker · scanscanning 97 slice summaries

2024/10/23 dinner at Priya's, met Alex · content

2025/02/24 Marcus on the MVP: 'a magic trick' · blunt

2025/07/19 knee injury, forced rest · frustrated

2026/06/27 World Cup watch party · lighthearted

2026/07/16 half-marathon, finished · proud

2026/08/07 speech draft #5 · stuck

pointers → 2025/02/24, 2026/06/27, 2026/08/07

main · deep readdeep-reading 3 slices, in full

Marcus was the first to tell you the truth about your MVP — 'a magic trick', conclusions with no reasoning. And on the night of the final, at his watch party, you saw the two of them finish each other's sentences and just knew they'd make it. The brief was short — so tell that one moment. Ninety seconds of honesty beats five minutes of sap.

06

Specialists, not brute force.

Sub-agents here are specialists, not one overextended generalist. The recall agent remembers like a witness — every answer cites the original slice, and "I don't have that memory" is a valid answer. The research agent investigates with sources; the thinking agent is a clean thinking chamber, on demand. The main agent orchestrates and verifies — nothing more.

Explore the architecture

One command. Local-first.

npm i -g @previously-lab/client, then run previously — a guided setup builds your memory as a plain local git repo (default ~/Documents/Previously), committed as you talk. Push it to any private remote; it's yours either way.

~/Documents/Previously

└─ episodic/

├─ slices/2026/08/07/1808/

│ ├─ previously.md ← what you said

│ └─ timeline/

├─ evolution/

│ └─ direction.md ← what better is

├─ current-previously.md ← selected

└─ strands.json

previously.md

focus: wedding speech for Marcus

open loop: share the draft outcome

wedding: Wednesday, August 12

Bring your own brain.

BYOK with your own API key, or bridge the Claude / Codex / Kimi subscription already on this machine — zero keys, zero API fees. Close the lid mid-turn; the local run resumes where it left off.

previously — writing slice 2026/08

laptop closed · 14:02

local turn keeps running+00:00

resumed where you left off

See the workflow

Open source. No lock-in.

MIT licensed, no telemetry. The kernel ships as the pinned @previously-lab/kernel npm package — upgrading the client upgrades everything. Self-host the cloud kernel on Vercel if you ever outgrow local.

MITLocal-firstBYOK or bridge

07

Run it today.

Two ways to run Previously: deploy to Vercel — the path we recommend — or keep everything on your own machine with the npm client.

Recommended

Cloud · Vercel

Fork the repo, deploy to Vercel in one click — memory lands in your own private GitHub repo, models run on your own API key. Five minutes to live.

Bring three things: a Vercel account, a private GitHub repo (memory's home), and your own model API key
Fork, one-click deploy, fill in the env vars — five minutes to live
Then open your private URL from any device, anywhere — memory travels with you

The price: three things to prepare before the first conversation.

Deployment guide

Stable

Local · npm

One command to install, then run previously and the setup wizard takes over. Your memory is a plain git repo on your disk — no third party in the loop.

terminal

$npm i -g @previously-lab/client

$previously

# the wizard walks you through setup

Requires Node.js ≥ 20
Bring your own API key (BYOK) — the exact same experience as the cloud
No key? Bridge a local Claude / Codex / Kimi CLI to try it first; that's a fallback, and some agent behavior is limited by the target CLI

The boundary: it lives on this machine — there's no link to open from anywhere else.

Previously on you.

Open source. Local-first. Always yours.

Try it yourself View on GitHub