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Skills & memory

Vanta persists what it learns to the global store at ~/.vanta (override with VANTA_HOME). The store is git-initialized, so every write is versioned for free.

The brain​

The brain is one cohesive unit — everything outside brain/ imports from a single facade. It composes two layers:

  • Markdown regions — nine seeded regions (identity, semantic, episodic, user_model, drives, reflections, mood, …) at ~/.vanta/brain/<region>.md, archived + git-versioned.
  • Structured entries — typed memories with strength × recency × contradiction-penalized confidence, salience/retrieval bonuses, and crystallization (raw → compressed → crystallized after repeated retrievals), with decay.

Surface: remember / recall (recall reinforces) / brainDigest (one composed prompt digest) / sweep / brainHealth. Each layer is best-effort — a broken layer degrades, never breaks the agent.

Guardrails: recalled entries are labeled usable only when fresh, non-conflicting, and provenanced. Stale / conflicting / weak-provenance entries surface as "not used" hypotheses, and the prompt requires verifying current state before acting on them.

Memory​

Per-goal summaries live at ~/.vanta/memories/<goalId>.md, capped per goal (older blocks stay in git history). A forked distiller maintains a session-memory file during long sessions and re-injects it on compaction or resume.

Skills​

Learned and bundled skills live at ~/.vanta/skills/<slug>/SKILL.md. The skill index is injected into the prompt; recall loads a full skill body on demand. A curator archives stale learned skills non-destructively (reversible, never deletes hand-authored skills).

A bundled library auto-installs each session, including nd-* gate skills, build-discipline skills, and design skills. The separate executive-function-skills pack is a reusable export for other agents and is deliberately not self-installed; Vanta's automatic support contract lives directly in its core system prompt.

Continuity across sessions​

  • Resume is age-gated — a prior thread is only carried into a restart if recent (VANTA_RESUME_MAX_AGE_MIN, default 120; 0 = always clean).
  • Carried goals launch paused until /goal resume.
  • Auto-handoff writes .vanta/handoff.md when context fills past a threshold and reloads it on the next interactive launch.