The permission zones
This is the part of the format that makes the difference between a document the AI respects and one it reworks. Every piece of memory sits inside a zone, and the zone says how much that piece is yours.
Why they exist
Give an AI a long text and it tends to do what it does best: summarise, reorder, «improve». On a shopping list that's no problem. On a memory where you wrote who you are and how you want to be treated, it is: the day it rewrites it more smoothly, you have lost exactly the words you chose.
Zones solve it the simplest way possible: instead of hoping it behaves, you write it down. Every block of text is wrapped between an opening and a closing that say what permissions apply inside.
How you write them
An opening on a line of its own, the content, a closing on a line of its own. Nothing else on the same line, or the program won't recognise it.
[P2]
## NUCLEUS 1: IDENTITA
Chi sei quando la conversazione ricomincia da zero.
[/P2]The levels run from 1 to 5 and don't nest: one zone must be closed before another opens. If you forget, the app tells you instead of guessing what you meant.
The five levels
The descriptions below are the official ones, taken from the base tier Reminder: they are the same words the AI reads in the file.
[P1]Genetic memory
Only you, and only by hand.The AI never touches it under any circumstance: it can ask you to change something, not do it. This is the zone of the ground rules, the ones that if they go it isn't the same AI any more. You edit it knowing full well what you're doing.
[P2]Permanent memory
The AI doesn't modify; an explicit command from you is required.The sacred zone: identity, archetypes, absolute rules, symbolic events. Expected lifetime: indefinite. This is where you put the things that must still hold two years from now.
[P3]Long-term memory
The AI may propose, not act.It can ask you to compress or correct, but it waits for your yes. This is the archive of what recurs: progress, goals, how your relationship works. Expected lifetime: days, weeks, the length of a project.
[P4]Short-term memory
The AI adds freely; to delete, it asks.The working zone: what you're doing right now, working notes, temporary bookmarks. Expected lifetime: hours, or the current session. It empties at the end of the job with no regrets.
[P5]Volatile memory
The AI does as it pleases.Scratch notes, counts, handovers from one module to another. It gets overwritten without warning: don't put anything there you want to count on tomorrow.
How you choose
The useful question isn't «how important is this», it's «what happens if in a month I find it rewritten». If the answer is «a disaster», it goes high — 1 or 2. If it's «never mind», it goes low. Most of what you write ends up in the middle, in 3.
And it's worth knowing straight away: putting everything in [P1] isn't caution, it's giving up the help. An AI that may touch nothing can't even keep your archive tidy.
When something doesn't add up
The program checks that zones are closed, that they aren't nested, and that structural content sits inside a zone rather than out in the open. When it finds a problem it says so and stops: it doesn't «fix» your file behind your back. It's the same rule that holds everywhere in IllAIra — better a clear error than a silent correction you discover three months later.