Organic Memory

Organic memory lets the MCP clients your people connect through the MCP Gateway remember what they learn and find it again later. A client stores a fact, a conversation summary or a document, and the next session (in the same client or a different one) can search it. Memory is private to each person by default, kept inside your organization, and organized into compartments.

Organic memory is served to people signed in with their Airia account, or with an external identity linked to their Airia account. Clients that connect with an API key do not get the memory tools.

This page is for the admin who turns organic memory on. For what people see once it is on, see Organic Memory for end users.

What organic memory adds to a gateway

When organic memory is on, the Gateway adds six memory tools to the gateways your people use:

In an MCP client, the tools appear with the prefix organic_memory__, for example organic_memory__search.

Who can turn it on

Open MCP → Organic memory. Saving the settings needs the Platform Admin, Admin or Security Admin role together with the MCP → Server Management → Manage permission. See the permissions reference.

Choose how memory is billed

Organic memory calls two kinds of model, and each has its own slot:

For each slot, choose one of two options:

• Use the Airia key. Calls go through Airia's AI Gateway on Airia's provider accounts, and the cost is Airia billing. The first time someone chooses it, Airia prepares an AI Gateway named Organic Memory Service Gateway for your organization. Preparing it needs the Platform Admin or Security Admin role together with MCP → Server Management → Manage, Gateway → AI Gateway → Manage and Gateway → AI Gateway → API Keys. The Usage panel on the same page shows that gateway's consumption; seeing it needs the Gateway → AI Gateway → Read permission.
• Bring your own key. Calls go to the provider on your own account, using a saved tenant-level API key credential. Choosing a credential needs the Settings → Credentials → Read permission. The credential must be ready to use, saved at the tenant level, and an API key.

You can mix the two options, for example the Airia key for the language model and your own OpenAI key for embeddings.

Where memory text is processed

Organic memory sends the text people store to two model providers:

• Anthropic, for the language model: to pull facts, people and topics out of what is stored.
• OpenAI, for embeddings: to turn stored text and search questions into vectors.

With Bring your own key, calls go to the provider on your organization's own account. With Use the Airia key, calls go through Airia's AI Gateway on Airia's accounts with those providers.

The Airia key

Use the Airia key only ever uses the AI Gateway key that Airia prepared for your organization. Airia keeps a record of that key and checks it on every save and every memory call. A credential you create yourself is never used in its place, even one with the same name or one that holds a valid provider key.

That key is managed by Airia. It does not appear in your credential lists or pickers, and it cannot be edited or deleted.

If your organization chose the Airia key before Airia began recording this key and memory stops working with it, open MCP → Organic memory and click Save once. Saving prepares and records the key again.

Neither the Gateway nor the memory service stores your provider key. The Gateway keeps only which option and which credential you chose, and reads the key from your credential store each time it is needed. The memory service holds a key it was sent in memory for at most five minutes and never writes it anywhere.

Turn it on

When you enable it, the six memory tools are approved by default, so they can be used as soon as a gateway includes them.

Where the tools appear

• Dynamic gateways. Each person's dynamic gateway includes the memory tools. A person can turn them off for themselves with Serve memory to my gateway in MCP Self-Service. It is on until they turn it off.
• Gateways you configure. Each gateway has its own Organic memory setting, which adds the six tools to that gateway. Turning it off removes them.
• The Memory area. The self-service dashboard has a Memory area where people see and manage what is stored. You show or hide it with the Memory switch in the Dashboard areas section of Admin toolkits, which needs the MCP → Gateway/Toolkit Assignment → Manage permission.

Sharing

People can share a compartment they own, from the Memory area, by finding someone in your organization by name or email. The person must have opened organic memory at least once. Sharing never reaches another organization, and a share follows the person rather than the email address, so a later account that reuses the same address gets nothing. A share is read-only: the person it is shared with can view the compartment, but cannot change what is in it, rename it, share it or delete it. There is no other access level. On a compartment they own, people see everyone it is shared with by email and can stop sharing with each person separately. See Sharing.

Data and retention

• Deleting items. When a person deletes memories, conversations or documents, the items leave every view, search and tool at once. They are permanently removed 30 days later, together with their search vectors and anything derived from them, such as the people and topics extracted from them. Removal happens within a few hours of the 30 days passing.
• What is never permanently removed. Memory tidies itself up: it folds near-duplicates together, retires memories that have faded, and hides working memories once their expiry passes. Those items are hidden, not deleted, and the 30-day removal does not touch them. Only items a person explicitly deleted are permanently removed.
• Deleting a compartment. Deleting a compartment removes it and everything in it for good, right away. If the compartment is shared, the people it is shared with lose access to it, and the delete confirmation says how many people that is. Nothing of theirs is deleted: shares are read-only, so they cannot add anything to it. A person's default compartment cannot be deleted.
• Deleting a Platform user. Removing a person from Airia does not delete their organic memory data. To remove it, see Remove a person's memory data.

Remove a person's memory data

An admin can permanently delete people's organic memory data in your organization. This is an API call to the MCP Gateway:

POST /api/v1/admin/organic-memory/purge/users
Content-Type: application/json

{ "userIds": ["<Platform user id>", "<Platform user id>"] }

Rate limits

Each person can make 60 memory requests a minute, and your organization as a whole 600 a minute, counted across the memory tools and the Memory area together. These limits are approximate. A client that goes over the limit is told when to retry.

Related Resources