cao-memory

cao-memory is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator. It costs 59 tokens per session (1,170 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A shared memory system for saving facts that should remain available across sessions and agents, such as project rules, user preferences, and past decisions.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps store, recall, and remove durable project conventions, corrections, preferences, references, and other reusable notes.
Why use it?
It reduces the need to repeat important context whenever a new session or agent starts. Memories can be limited to a project, user, machine, session, or agent role.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

About the project

CLI Agent Orchestrator is a tool that coordinates multiple AI coding command-line programs by running them as separate workers in isolated terminal sessions. A supervisor uses it to delegate software tasks to specialist agents in parallel or in sequence while the workers retain their normal command-line capabilities. The catalogue skills operate this orchestration workflow.

awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator · 1,205 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-memory
Any agent
npx skills add awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator --skill cao-memory
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cao-memory

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-memory.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-memory)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-memory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator/cao-memory.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 59 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,170 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00059 $0.01170
Opus 5 $0.00030 $0.00585
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00234
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00117

Measured 5d ago against content hash 91d1d9c585b5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cao-memory scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/cao-memory/SKILL.md · 116 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 116 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CAO Memory

CAO gives every agent a shared, persistent memory. A fact you store in one session is available to a brand-new agent in a later session — even on a different provider. Use it so the user never has to repeat themselves.

These are CAO's cross-provider memory tools (memory_store, memory_recall, memory_forget), exposed by the CAO MCP server. They are distinct from any provider-native memory the CLI tool may have.

Scopes and types

Every memory has a scope (where it applies) and a type (what kind of fact it is).

Scope Applies to Use for
project (default) This repo / working directory Conventions, architecture, build rules
global Every project User identity, durable cross-project preferences
federated Every project on this machine Reusable, repo-independent lessons worth sharing across all your work (rejects credentials)
session This run only Short-lived task context
agent This agent role Role-specific working notes

Types: project (default), user (who the user is / preferences), feedback (corrections and how-to-work guidance), reference (pointers to docs, tickets, URLs).

Recall — check memory BEFORE asking the user

At the start of a task, and whenever you're about to ask the user something they may have already told you, search memory first.

memory_recall(query="database widgets endpoint testing")

Omit scope to search all scopes (results follow precedence session → project → global → agent → federated). Filter with scope= or memory_type= when you know where to look. Recall is for searching beyond what was auto-injected (see below) — don't re-recall what's already in front of you.

Store — save anything worth remembering, immediately

Store the moment you learn something durable. Don't wait until the end of the session. Store conclusions, not transcript. Keep each memory to 1–2 sentences.

Store when you hit any of these:

  • A correction — "No, we use DynamoDB here, not SQL." → store it so no agent makes that mistake again.
  • A decided convention — "Every endpoint must have a pytest test before merge."
  • A user preference — how they like work done, tools they prefer.
  • A non-obvious project constraint — something you couldn't infer from the code.

Read the full file on GitHub · 116 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 116 lines · 59 tokens per session scan A 91d1d9c585b5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cao-memory is a skill published in the GitHub repository awslabs/cli-agent-orchestrator (1,205 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 59 tokens to every session and 1,170 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.