Edit her¶
Eternego's design values transparency: everything she knows is a plain file on your disk — no database, no hidden state. Her memory files (person.md, traits.md, persona-trait.md, wishes.md, struggles.md, permissions.md) and the instructions she's learned (the .md files under meanings/) are all Markdown, open in any editor.
The preferred way to change her is to talk to her. Every file here keeps itself current through conversation: tell her something about yourself and the nightly consolidate stage folds it into person.md; correct how she handled a moment and she adjusts; let her meet a situation she has no procedure for and she learns a new instruction for it. Editing by hand is the shortcut — for when you want a change to land this instant, or to fix something directly.
Add a fact about yourself¶
Open ~/.eternego/personas/<id>/home/person.md. Add a line:
Save. The next tick, she reads person.md (it's part of her identity, rebuilt every read) and incorporates it. From now on, she knows.
This is the same pattern she uses to learn about you over time — each night, the consolidate stage updates these files based on what happened that day. You can write directly to them when you want her to know something faster than waiting for consolidate to catch it.
Grant a permission¶
permissions.md is her record of what you've allowed her to do, in plain prose. She reads it every interaction.
Add a line:
The permission becomes part of how she decides. The next time she'd otherwise ask "may I run this?", she checks her permissions and acts if it's covered.
This is permission-as-prose, not permission-as-config. She reads it, weighs it, asks if she's unsure. The trust is in the reading.
Refine an instruction she's learned¶
The situations she knows how to handle live as Markdown under ~/.eternego/personas/<id>/home/meanings/ — one file each. The first # heading is the intention (the kind of moment); the body is the path (how she handles it, in her own voice). Open one and refine the path — sharpen a step, add a caveat, cut something that misfires — and she follows the revised version the next time she's in that situation.
What you don't do here is write one from scratch. She authors her own instructions by learning: when she meets a kind of moment she has no procedure for, she works one out and saves it herself. By hand, you refine what's already there — you don't seed the catalog.
Tune her rhythm¶
Open ~/.eternego/personas/<id>/home/config.json. Among the other fields you'll see:
This is how long, in seconds, she waits without activity before consolidating the day. Default is one hour. Set it to 1800 if you want her to consolidate every half hour, or 7200 for every two hours. The change takes effect on her next restart.
What now¶
You've installed her, set her up, talked to her, read her files, and edited her by hand. The rest of the docs go deeper:
- Concepts — what's actually happening under the hood.
- Build & Extend — add tools, abilities, meanings, channels, model providers in code.
- Operating — running her over time, troubleshooting, migration.
- API and CLI — every endpoint and command, for operating her over HTTP or the shell.