How to Give OpenClaw Real Persistent Memory with Obsidian

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Why OpenClaw's Memory Falls Short

OpenClaw has taken the open-source world by storm. It's the fastest growing open-source project of all time, and for good reason — having a personal AI agent that lives on your own hardware is incredibly powerful. I set up my own agent, Lloyd, on an M1 Mac Mini that had been collecting dust under my stairs. Lloyd has his own Apple ID, so I can text him day or night. My wife Amy even uses him for research tasks, and it's seriously cut down on how much she relies on tools like ChatGPT.

But here's the thing: OpenClaw's promise of persistent, forever memory is, frankly, not true. Out of the box, it doesn't deliver on that promise. Conversations fade, context gets lost, and your agent forgets things it absolutely should remember. The honeymoon phase ended fast once I realized that the built-in memory system just isn't reliable enough for daily use.

So I set out to fix it. The solution? Obsidian — a free, cross-platform note-taking app that stores everything as simple markdown files. By connecting Obsidian to OpenClaw, you can give your AI agent a real, persistent memory system that actually works.

Where This Idea Came From

The inspiration for this setup came from an article I spotted on X by Heinrich, who wrote about using Obsidian with Claude Code. While I'm using OpenClaw rather than Claude Code, the fundamentals are identical. The article lays out a philosophy for structuring your notes in a way that an AI agent can actually understand and leverage. It's worth reading in full because many of the concepts in this guide were born from that article.

Setting Up Obsidian

First, download Obsidian. It's free, runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it'll work on basically any hardware you have lying around. Very lightweight.

Once installed, create what Obsidian calls a "vault." A vault is simply a folder that holds markdown files. Since AI systems use markdown for nearly everything, having your notes in this format makes them instantly compatible with any AI agent. I named mine "Dave's Vault" and placed it on a local network drive that syncs across my machines.

One important tip I discovered the hard way: avoid spaces in your vault name. I initially used "Dave's Vault" and ran into indexing issues later. Renaming it to "Daves-Vault" with hyphens fixed everything immediately. Save yourself the headache and use hyphens from the start.

Designing a File Structure That Trains Your AI

This is where it gets interesting. The file structure isn't just about organizing your notes — it's about training your AI agent on how you think. That sounds like a big claim, but it addresses a real shortcoming of most AI interactions: the AI doesn't understand your personal context, your priorities, or how you prefer to receive information.

Using the folder structure template from Heinrich's article as a starting point, I had Lloyd customize it for my specific needs. This included folders for work, projects, thinking, personal life, and even a family section. The key is telling your AI to ask clarifying questions rather than making assumptions. When I asked Lloyd to add family information, it actually already knew my kids' names from previous conversations — but it asked thoughtful follow-up questions about the purpose of the notes before building anything out.

The result is a comprehensive vault with folders like Inbox, Projects, Thinking, Resources, and more. Each folder contains guide files (like inbox-guide.md) that teach the agent how to handle that category of notes. Lloyd created these proactively after reading the article — a nice example of an AI agent taking initiative in a productive way.

Syncing Your Vault Across Devices

Once your vault is created, you need to think about access. If your AI agent runs on a different machine (like mine on a Mac Mini), the vault files need to be reachable from that machine.

You have a few options. Obsidian offers a paid Sync feature ($4-5/month per user) that handles multi-device sync without any networking complexity. If you'd rather not pay, you can store your vault on a network drive or shared folder. That's what I do — the files live physically on my Mac Mini and sync over my local network.

For remote access when I'm away from home, I use Tailscale. It makes your local network travel with you by creating a secure mesh VPN across all your devices. Most of what you need is available on their free plan, and I honestly use it daily. It's becoming essential for anyone running local AI infrastructure.

Security Considerations

Before you start filling your vault with personal notes, think about what you're sharing. Whatever goes into the vault will be accessible to your AI agent, which means there's a security dimension here. If someone ever breached your agent's access, they'd have access to your notes too.

More importantly, if you're using a cloud-based LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) with OpenClaw, your notes will be transmitted to those providers as context. If you're running models locally, this isn't a concern. But if you're using cloud models, you're uploading your personal thoughts and decision-making patterns to third-party servers.

I'm not saying this to scare you off — just be deliberate about what goes in the vault. You might want to keep certain sensitive information separate, or consider running local models for your most personal interactions.