# Two agents, one memory, and why I re-read every write

> Hermes and Claude Code share one pool of notes. Mining 148 chat threads into it produced about 400 writes; 361 of them needed fixing when checked against their sources.

Canonical: https://mark-web.com/writing/two-agents-one-memory
Author: Mark Sulleza
Published: 2026-09-30

I run two agents most days: Claude Code for building, and Hermes for scheduled jobs and messages. With separate memories, whatever one learned never reached the other. Now they share one pool of short Markdown notes in a single folder.

## Wiring it up

Claude Code uses the pool as its memory. Hermes needed a workaround, because its memory folder is fixed in code: it reaches the pool through a skill that loads automatically in every session. Hermes’s own built-in memory file stays separate, because a drift guard rejects any write to it that didn’t come from Hermes. I also raised Hermes’s memory size limit from 2,200 to 3,200 characters.

## The experiment

On 29 September I had Claude Code mine 148 of my chat threads into the pool.

| | |
|---|--:|
| Findings extracted | 1,504 |
| Already in the pool | 816 |
| New notes written | 259 |
| Existing notes updated | 139 |

Then I had it re-read every one of the 401 writes against the thread it came from.

**361 needed a fix.** Facts that had been true in the thread but weren’t any more. Links to notes that didn’t exist. And one secret, copied from a chat into a note, which I replaced with a pointer to where it actually lives.

## What I took from it

Extraction is cheap. A model will turn 148 threads into 1,500 confident findings in an afternoon. Verification is the work, and it decides whether a memory pool helps or hurts. A note that’s slightly wrong doesn’t stay in one session: it gets loaded into every future session of two different agents, and they act on it.

The rules I’d give anyone setting this up:

- A note names where it came from, so it can be checked.
- Nothing that looks like a credential goes in; store a pointer to where the secret lives.
- Dates are absolute. “Last week” is wrong by next week.
- When a note turns out to be wrong, fix or delete it. Don’t add a newer note that contradicts it; two notes that disagree are worse than none.