AI Memory and Skills

When you author a BEP across multiple sessions, your AI starts each conversation fresh unless it has been given a way to remember. dotBEP supports two mechanisms for this: memory, which the assistant manages on its own, and skills, which you define to shape how the assistant behaves during authoring.

Memory

Your AI maintains a memory file for your dotBEP project. At the start of every session, the assistant reads this file automatically before you do anything else. As the conversation progresses, the assistant updates it on its own: if an important decision is made, a preference is established, or context emerges that will be relevant in future sessions, the assistant records it without you having to ask.

The purpose of memory is continuity. If you establish in one session that the client prefers deliverables described in terms of outcomes rather than activities, or that a particular team is the coordination lead for all decisions, you do not have to repeat that in the next session. The assistant already knows.

You do not need to manage the memory file directly. The assistant handles it proactively, but if something important comes up and you want to make sure it is recorded, you can tell it explicitly:

Remember that the client requires all model files to be submitted in IFC format.

Save to memory that [team name] is the coordination lead for all clash resolution decisions.

If you ever want to know what the memory contains, you can ask:

What do you currently have in memory for this project?

And if something in memory is no longer accurate, you can ask the assistant to update or remove it:

Remove the note about [topic] from memory. It is no longer relevant.

Skills

Skills are reusable instructions that you define once and the assistant applies proactively during authoring. Where memory stores facts and decisions, skills store behaviors: ways of working that you want the assistant to follow consistently without you having to specify them each time.

A skill could be as simple as a writing style rule for a specific section, or as specific as a step-by-step procedure for how you want the assistant to handle a particular type of task. Once defined, the assistant draws on the relevant skill whenever it encounters a situation where it applies.

Defining a skill

To create a skill, describe the behavior you want the assistant to apply:

Create a skill: whenever you draft a standard for this BEP, use formal language, write in the imperative form, and structure it with a Purpose section followed by a Requirements section.

Create a skill: whenever I ask you to add a deliverable, always confirm the responsible team and milestone before saving.

Create a skill: when describing workflow steps, keep each description to one sentence and focus on the output of the step, not the activity itself.

Reviewing and removing skills

To see which skills are currently active:

List the skills defined for this project.

To remove one that is no longer needed:

Remove the skill about [description].

When skills apply

Skills are not triggered by a keyword or a command. The assistant reads them at the start of each session alongside memory, and applies them whenever the situation calls for it. If you defined a skill about how standards should be written, the assistant will follow it the next time you ask it to draft a standard, without any further instruction on your part.

This is what makes skills different from a one-time instruction: you say it once, and it becomes part of how the assistant works on your project from that point on.

Memory or skill?

The distinction is not always obvious, but the question to ask is: is this something the assistant should know, or something it should do?

Use memory when the information is a fact, a decision, or a context detail specific to the project. Things the assistant needs to be aware of so it can reason correctly, but that do not change how it behaves in a procedural sense.

Examples: the client’s preferred way of describing deliverables, which team leads coordination decisions, a constraint agreed with the client that affects how certain sections should be written.

Use a skill when the information is a behavioral rule: a consistent way of doing something that you want the assistant to apply whenever a certain type of task comes up. Things that define how the assistant works, not what it knows.

Examples: a writing style for standards, a confirmation step before saving certain changes, a structure to follow when creating workflow steps.

If you are not sure, the assistant can help you decide:

I want the assistant to always [describe what you have in mind]. Should this be a memory or a skill?