# Session 03 — Memory & Machinery · Student Handout

Your name: ________________   Partner: ________________

Two acts tonight. **Act I:** give your agent a memory that survives the
night. **Act II:** understand the building every answer is made in — well
enough to explain the news.

---

## Miss-log review · the three kinds of miss

Sort every miss from your week into one pile:

| Kind | Meaning | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| **Rule gap** | No rule covered the case | Write the rule (5 min) |
| **Memory gap** | The agent couldn't know a fact about your life | **Tonight, Act I** |
| **Judgment gap** | Rules + facts existed, call was still wrong | Session 04 |

Count yours:  Rule gaps: ____  Memory gaps: ____  Judgment gaps: ____

Most people find memory gaps are the biggest pile. Were they for you? ____

---

## ACT I — MEMORY

### The memory pattern (reference)

```
memory/
├── MEMORY.md              ← the index, read at every startup
├── people-dave-urgent.md  ← one fact per file
├── school-newsletter.md
└── retired/               ← stale facts move here, never deleted
```

### The three-part test — every fact must pass all three

1. **Useful to the job?**  (Does the agent need it to do better?)
2. **Harmless if leaked?**  (Could you read this file aloud in public?)
3. **Yours to record?**  (Your life — not your neighbor's private info?)

**Never write down:** passwords, account numbers, SSNs, other people's
private information, medical/financial specifics beyond what the job needs.

---

## Exercise 1 · Teach it who you are  ·  30 min · solo mine, partner audit

Turn your memory-gap misses into facts. Aim for ten.

| # | The fact (one sentence) | Useful? | Harmless? | Yours? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | | |
| 2 | | | | |
| 3 | | | | |
| 4 | | | | |
| 5 | | | | |
| 6 | | | | |
| 7 | | | | |
| 8 | | | | |
| 9 | | | | |
| 10 | | | | |

**Partner audit:** your partner checks every fact against the three-part
test. Which fact did they make you cut or reword? ______________________

Now build them:
```
create a memory file for each of these facts, one fact per file, and
add each to your MEMORY.md index
```

**The recall test:** start a completely fresh session and re-run your
hardest miss from last week.

Did it get it right this time?  ☐ yes  ☐ no

**Done when:** the fresh session passes the recall test.

---

## ACT II — MACHINERY

### The journey of one sentence (reference)

```
your phone → tokens → fiber → the floor (racks of GPUs) → back
             |                  |                            |
        ~20 tokens        ~1 trillion               under one second,
        per question   calculations per token       round trip
```

### The numbers that explain the news

- **8 TB/s** — how fast an AI chip moves data between its memory and its
  cores. Your laptop: ~0.05 TB/s. That's ~160×.
- **HBM** (high-bandwidth memory) — memory stacked right on the chip. The
  factories retooling for it are why ordinary RAM got scarce and pricey.
- **100,000+ GPUs** — a single frontier training run. Not a data center;
  one job, running for months.
- **Gigawatts** — the power new AI campuses contract for. City-scale.

---

## Exercise 2 · Price a thought  ·  20 min · pairs

Open last night's log and find the token counts.
`[INSTRUCTOR: show exactly where token usage appears in the log.]`

| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Tokens used in last night's run (in + out) | ______ |
| Price per million tokens (from the board) | $ ______ |
| **Cost of your entire overnight run** | $ ______ |
| Emails triaged | ______ |
| **Cost per 1,000 emails** | $ ______ |

Compare that to the hourly rate of anyone you've ever paid to help you.
Reaction: ______________________________________________

**Now the reverse.** At that price, three other things in your week worth
delegating to an agent:

1. `____________________________________________________________`
2. `____________________________________________________________`
3. `____________________________________________________________`

*(Keep these — they're your candidate agents for after the course.)*

---

## Exercise 3 · Read the headlines  ·  25 min · pairs → room

Draw a headline card. Prepare a **60-second explanation** using tonight's
model (tokens, bandwidth, HBM, gigawatts, agents). No jargon you can't
define in one breath. Deliver to the room.

**Headline cards** (instructor may swap for this month's news):

- A. "Memory chip prices jump 30% as AI demand strains supply"
- B. "Tech giant signs deal for a gigawatt of power for new data center"
- C. "New export rules limit sales of advanced AI chips"
- D. "Small town divided over proposed data center's water use"
- E. "Chipmaker's stock soars past $3 trillion valuation"
- F. "Cloud provider rations GPU access amid shortage"
- G. "Your next laptop may cost more — here's the AI connection"
- H. "Startup raises $500M, most of it earmarked for compute"

Our card: ____   Our explanation survived the skeptic?  ☐ yes  ☐ no

---

## Homework · let the memory accumulate

- Add to your nightly job: **"propose new memory facts when you spot a
  pattern"** (proposals only — you approve each morning).
- Approve or reject its proposals daily. Rejections teach it as much as
  approvals.
- Bring to Session 04:
  - One thing your agent remembered that **surprised you**:
    `_______________________________________________`
  - Your miss-log delta — did misses drop after memory night?
    Before: ____ /week   After: ____ /week