THE BEST WAY TO ADD LONG TERM MEMORY TO YOUR AI APP
There are three workable shapes in 2026. Build your own memory layer on Postgres and pgvector. Adopt a managed memory service such as Mem0 or Zep. Or plug into memory your users already own and carry with them. Most teams should start by understanding the first, evaluate the second, and know the third exists, because it changes what your app knows on day one.
BUILD IT YOURSELF
The core is not the vector database, it is the write policy. After each conversation, extract candidate memories with a cheap model, then decide: ignore, add, update or invalidate. Store type, timestamps, provenance and validity windows, not just text. Retrieve with hybrid search plus recency and importance, scoped hard to the user. Two tables and two model calls per turn get you surprisingly far, and you fully understand your own memory semantics.
MANAGED MEMORY SERVICES
Mem0 handles extraction, deduplication, user scoping and hybrid retrieval behind an API, and its OpenMemory layer targets cross-assistant use. Zep models memory as a temporal knowledge graph, which pays off when facts change over time and relationships matter. Both are real infrastructure. Both also share a property worth naming: the memory your app accumulates is siloed to your app, lives in your stack, and carries the custody, consent and deletion obligations that come with it.
THE THIRD SHAPE: MEMORY YOUR USERS BRING
AI Passport inverts the model. The user holds one governed memory across all their AI apps: preferences, history, context from accounts they connect. Your app asks for the categories it needs, the owner approves a pass, and your servers receive approved answers instead of accumulating a raw archive.
Two consequences follow. Your app is not cold on day one, because a new user arrives with context they can grant you in one approval. And your compliance surface shrinks, because consent, revocation, deletion and audit receipts are the platform, not a roadmap item.
HOW THE SHAPES COMPARE
| Build it | Mem0 or Zep | AI Passport | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where memory lives | Your database | The service, scoped to your app | The user's passport |
| Day-one context for a new user | None | None | Whatever the user grants |
| Consent and deletion | You build it | You build it | Built in, owner controlled |
| Pricing shape | Infra cost | Usage based | $1,000 a month flat |
FAIR QUESTIONS
Do we replace our vector store with this?
No. Keep app-internal memory for app-internal state. AI Passport covers the user's portable context: who they are, what they prefer, what they have granted. The two compose.
How does the integration work?
Standard OpenID Connect for sign-in and a server-to-server API. Your app reads approved answers, not raw tokens. Read the docs.
What does it cost?
3 months free, 6 for YC companies, then $1,000 a month flat with unlimited users, storage and connectors. The offer is on the startup page.
START WITH THE STARTUP OFFER
Three months free, six for YC companies, then $1,000 a month flat.
Vendor and platform facts checked 31 August 2026.