# The Mind

> What your workspace remembers about your work and the people in it, where that memory comes from, and how to correct or delete any of it.

Most tools file what you write and never read it again. The Mind is the part of
The Margin that reads it back. From the notes, cards and conversations you were
already making, it works out who and what keeps coming up, and it uses that to
answer questions no single note could.

## What it holds

- **Hubs**: the people, projects, organizations and agents that keep turning up. Mention Sarah in a note and again on a card, and both lead to the same Sarah. **Names**, under Mind in the sidebar, lists them.
- **Memories**: durable facts about you, each with an importance and each traceable to the note, card or conversation it came from. "I do not eat meat" is kept. "Can you make me a board for the trip" is a request, and is not.
- **Connections**: links between things. This note is about that project; these two cards describe the same work under different names.

The **Mind** page draws all of it as a map. A `[[wikilink]]` you type yourself
draws a line on that map straight away, because a link you made on purpose is
better evidence than one the engine inferred.

![The Mind map: each note is a star, a wikilink is a line, and a star opens on what it connects to (15 seconds, silent).](https://themarginapp.com/docs/media/loops/dl132/dl132-poster.webp)

_The Mind map: each note is a star, a wikilink is a line, and a star opens on what it connects to (15 seconds, silent)._

The button at the top of the Mind page, **Connect ideas** (or a count
such as **3 to connect**), opens **Possible links**: pairs of things
that look related, each with a line on why. **Connect** draws the link and
**Not now** sets the pair aside, so nothing is linked until you say so.
Opening the list costs nothing; **Find more** looks again and uses a weave
credit.

## How it learns

- New and edited content is picked up in the background, in batches, about
  every fifteen minutes.
- An edit is read again, so the Mind does not keep a stale copy. A memory that
  was true in March and wrong by August does more harm than a gap.
- Recall matches on meaning as well as on the words. Ask "did anyone say
  anything about the wedding" and it finds the note that discussed the
  ceremony without using the word.

> **Note: Suggestions wait for you** What the engine infers about tags, links and who is who lands in a review
> queue on **Organize**. By default nothing there applies itself. If you switch
> the weave to Auto, only confident, additive changes apply, and a merge never
> does. See [Curating the Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/curating-the-mind).

## Reading and correcting what it remembers

Everything the Mind durably believes about you is listed in
**Settings → Your Brain**, under "What your Margin remembers about you". It is
written as plain sentences, grouped as things you have shared, how you work,
and patterns it has noticed. Any line can be edited, or forgotten. Forgetting
deletes it, and recall stops using it at once.

That list is the whole of it. A wrong entry you cannot see misleads every
answer that touches it, which is why the list is there to read.

## Whose memory it is

Memory belongs to the workspace it was learned in. What Margin learns in the
family workspace stays in the family workspace, and every member can read it on
**Settings → Your Brain**, because the household's assistant
answers all of them from it. Your personal workspace's memory is yours alone.

In a shared workspace each fact keeps who taught it, shown under it as
"Taught by" and their name. Only that person, or an owner or admin of the
workspace, can edit or forget it; everyone else sees whose it is and has
nothing to press.

## About you

Some facts are about you rather than about any workspace: you like short
answers, you are vegetarian, you do not take calls before ten. Those live in
**About you** (**Mind → About you**, also linked from
**Settings → Your Brain**). About you follows you into every
workspace, Margin Intelligence reads it in each one, and nobody else can see
it, a workspace owner included.

- Add, reword or remove lines yourself, up to 100 of them, each one short
  sentence (500 characters at most). Each line says where it came from: added
  by you, saved by Margin Intelligence, or saved by a connected assistant.
- Tell Margin Intelligence in your own workspace and it keeps the fact in About
  you. In a shared workspace it asks once, with two buttons: **For the
  household** (or **For the team**) keeps it in that workspace's memory, and
  **Just for me** keeps it in About you.
- It holds facts about you and nothing else. A workspace's notes, cards and
  lists never go into it.
- Workspace exports leave it out. **Download** on the About
  you page gives you your own copy.
- Assistants you connect over MCP can read and change it, for you only
  (`list_about_me`, `add_about_me_fact`, `update_about_me_fact`,
  `forget_about_me_fact`).
- On the phone app, About you is in the Mind's menu.

For a person or a project, open it on **Names**, the middle tab at the top
of the sidebar (**Mind → Names**), which lists the names the
Mind has noticed in your writing. It is not the list of people in your
workspace, which is [People](https://themarginapp.com/docs/people-and-roles). A name's sheet shows the short
profile Margin keeps, where it appears and what it connects to, and a field to
teach Margin about it directly. What you write there is treated as fact, and
only the workspace owner and admins can change it.

## Keeping things out of it

Four controls, lightest first.

| Control              | Where it is                                                          | What the Mind does with the item                                                                                                                            |
| -------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Weave privately**  | A note's or folder's menu; **Private weaving** in a board's settings | Still learns from it, but files its suggestions in a collapsed Private group, never leads recall with it, and leaves it out of every export and memory pack |
| **Hide from memory** | A note's menu                                                        | Never embeds or recalls it. The note stays in your notes and your own search                                                                                |
| **Move to Vault**    | A note's menu, a board's settings, a checklist, a whiteboard         | Seals it: hidden on screen and from the assistant while your Vault is locked                                                                                |
| **Put away**         | A learned star on the **Mind** map                                   | Seals everything that star was learned from, takes it out of memory, and deletes what was learned from it on the spot                                       |

Weaving privately is a curtain. The Vault is the lock, and
[Your data](https://themarginapp.com/docs/your-data) says exactly what it does and does not encrypt.
Put away is undone from the Vault panel in **Settings → Your Brain**, one
**Bring back** per item. See [Curating the Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/curating-the-mind).

> **Side note:** It will not tell you that Tuesday's breakfast looked like Wednesday's.
> Repetition and meaning are different things, and the engine had to be taught
> that.

In a shared workspace the Mind is scoped the way your data is. Each person's
recall reads only what that person can open, so a card on a board you are not
on never reaches your answers, whether it comes up in the background or when
Margin Intelligence looks something up in memory. The Mind cannot become a way to learn things
about the people you live with that they never told you.

## Bringing your memory from another assistant

If another assistant, such as ChatGPT, already knows you, you can bring that over.
**Mind → Bring your memory** (also in Settings → Your Brain) gives you a
prompt to paste into the assistant you use. Paste its answer back and each
fact is listed with its kind: a preference, a person, a project, a routine or
a fact. Uncheck or fix anything, then save. Nothing is kept until you do.

Facts Margin already knows start unchecked, and anything that names something
you hid from memory stays out. Saved facts go into this workspace's memory, so
in a shared workspace the other members can see them; a personal workspace is
the best place for them. Each import is listed on the same page with
**Undo this import**, which removes exactly what it added.

A ChatGPT data export does not include what ChatGPT remembers about you, only
your chats, so the prompt is the way in. If your export does carry a memory
file, the page reads it.

## Taking it with you

**Settings → Your Brain** exports everything the Mind has learned about you,
as JSON to import into another Margin or as Markdown to read. The same page
brings a JSON file back: near-matches update in place, so importing your own
file twice does not duplicate anything. A memory pack is a frozen copy of your
file that you share with one person, who imports it into their own workspace.

Anything sealed in your Vault stays out of every file and pack, and so does
anything woven privately. More on exports in [Your data](https://themarginapp.com/docs/your-data).

> **On the phone:** The phone app saves both files itself, as "Portable brain" and "Portable
> brain, as prose", straight to your share sheet or a folder.

## What it costs

The Mind is on every plan, and so is exporting it. What varies is how much
background work it does for you each month. Weaving has its own allowance,
separate from the assistant's, so indexing your writing never eats the budget
you wanted for questions.

**Weave credits a month**

- **25** on Free, plus a one-time 25 when the account is new
- **150** on Pro
- **300** on Family, pooled across the household
- **150** per seat on Team
- **50** while a trial runs, unless your paid plan already gives more

Both allowances and what is left of them are in **Settings → Billing**.
Reading and correcting the Mind in the app are yours on every plan. The paid
part is letting an agent you connect from outside write to it, which comes with
the plans that allow outside agents at all. See
[Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits).

> **For agents:** An agent you connect reads the review queue with `weave_list_suggestions` and
> acts on one row with `accept_suggestion` or `dismiss_suggestion`. Sealed items
> never appear to it. Those writes, and `hide_from_memory`, need Pro, Family or
> Team.

**Where to next**

- [Curating the Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/curating-the-mind): the review queue, the people directory and Put away
- [Margin Intelligence](https://themarginapp.com/docs/margin-ai): the assistant that answers from all of this
- [Your data](https://themarginapp.com/docs/your-data): exports, the Vault and what deleting deletes


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Section: The Mind. Checked against the running product on October 5, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt