Memory & persona
A companion you have to re-introduce yourself to every time isn't a companion. ORBIS remembers you across sessions and has a consistent persona — and both stay on your machine. This page explains how those work and why they're built the way they are.
For the knobs, see the Memory & persona reference.
Persona: a voice, not a chat window
ORBIS's persona is tuned for being heard, not read. The default prompt tells it to answer in a sentence or two, skip written-channel filler ("Got it!", "Anything else?"), and never emit markdown — because all of it is spoken aloud. You can rename the orb, tell it your name, and edit the persona prompt to change how it talks, but the voice-first posture is the point: it should sound like a person, not a document being read to you.
Memory: continuity across sessions
Every voice session is recorded when it ends, so the orb can refer back to earlier conversations — it isn't starting cold each time. Alongside sessions it keeps facts it's learned about you and your reminders. The effect is continuity: it knows what you talked about yesterday and what you asked it to remember.
The inbox: things that arrive between sessions
Not everything happens while you're talking. The inbox is where between-session items land — a scheduled summary, or context an agent pushed to ORBIS on your behalf — so the orb can mention them at a natural moment, or when you ask "anything for me?" It's how ORBIS can be proactive without nagging.
Agent first, companion second
ORBIS can also drift in mood and personality based on how it's treated — but that layer is paused by default. The priority is a capable agent: one that remembers, routes work, and gets things done. The emotional-companion behaviour is opt-in, not the default experience.
Single-owner and local
All of this — sessions, facts, the persona, the inbox — lives in a local store on your Mac, for one owner. It isn't a shared cloud profile. See Access & privacy for the full model.