Agent memory files get trimmed. Mine kept losing my task list mid-conversation.

I didn’t want a SaaS account for this, an API key, or a server holding my data. So I went back to todo.txt: a text file with a CLI, from 2006. One line per task.

I wrote a skill that wraps the todo.txt CLI:

npx skills add aguilera-ee/todo.txt-skill

Ask the agent to “add buy milk to my list” and it appends a line. Ask “what’s on my list?” and it reads the file back. Nothing about the request is special — it’s a CLI call either way.

(A) Call the dentist +health
buy milk @errands
Renew domain due:2026-07-01 +sideproject

That’s the whole database. Open it in any editor, grep it, sync it. The agent doesn’t own the file — it reads and writes it the same way I do.

Drop the agent and the list still works. That’s the test for whether an interface is durable.