Neotoma
A deterministic, privacy-first memory layer for AI agents — built capital-efficient out of Barcelona.
What it is
Neotoma is a typed, versioned, user-controlled memory substrate that AI agents read and write through MCP. It gives cross-tool agents shared, verifiable state — not another notes app, not provider-locked chat memory.
Repo and docs are open at github.com/markmhendrickson/neotoma. Product site is neotoma.io.
Why now
- Agents are moving from chat into long-running, multi-tool work. The missing primitive isn't another retrieval-style memory — it's a substrate with provenance and reproducible state.
- Provider-native memories are account-scoped and opaque. Users running agents across models and tools end up acting as the human sync layer between them.
- MCP makes a tool-agnostic memory layer practically deployable for the first time. Open schemas plus content-addressed observations make it auditable.
What makes it different
- Schema-first extraction with hash-based IDs and reproducible state
- Versioned observations with field-level provenance and immutability guarantees
- Cross-tool access through MCP — works with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and custom agents in one substrate
- User-controlled by default: local-first storage, typed export, user-held keys
- Composable typed primitives that span domains (work, finance, health, relationships) rather than per-vertical silos
Where it is today
Working product in active developer release. Used daily by the founder across a full agentic stack — code, writing, calendar, finances, and infrastructure operations.
The problem is acute enough that developers keep building their own homegrown agent-memory systems — flat-file state, JSON heartbeats, custom MCP servers, personal Postgres schemas — and surfacing them publicly. Field conversations with infrastructure engineers and operators surface the same gaps in each: no versioning, no provenance, no cross-tool access. The framings they converge on independently — “state integrity, not retrieval quality,” “CI/CD for agent state” — match the design Neotoma already ships.
Public documentation, open repo, deterministic guarantees written down. A small set of early design-partner conversations and integrations is under way with operators running personal and professional agent infrastructure.
Going to depth on the personal agentic OS builder/operator before expanding into team and pipeline contexts.
Recent writing
Thesis
- Six agentic trends I'm betting on (and how I might be wrong) — The structural pressures behind the work, framed as falsifiable bets.
- From memory to nervous system — Storage first, signaling next: how a state layer becomes coordination infrastructure for agent fleets.
- The markdown memory ceiling — Why three billion-dollar agent platforms converged on plain-text memory, and where it fails.
On benchmarks and gaps
- Agent memory breaks at 500K tokens, not 10 million — On the BEAM benchmark, and the failure mode it does not test.
- No AI memory benchmark tests what actually breaks — Retrieval metrics dominate. Write integrity is unmeasured.
Capital posture
Default mode is capital-efficient and self-funded. Revenue objective for the next twelve months is in the low-six-figure range, oriented around mid-market design partners rather than volume subscriptions.
Open to small, time-boxed rounds when a profitable milestone is in sight and terms align with founder-friendly defaults: non-participating 1x, no vetoes on hiring or pricing or product, founder vesting unaltered, 50%+ diluted control preserved until durable profitability.
Where there's likely fit
- Investors comfortable with a revenue-first, capital-efficient pace and a founder who treats product depth and market validation as the primary risks to retire
- Funds whose theses cover agent infrastructure, deterministic state, AI-native developer tools, or user-sovereign data primitives
- Partners who value working artifacts and open documentation over narrative-led decks
Get in touch
If the above resonates and there's plausible alignment, I'm happy to set up a working walkthrough — live system, current architecture, and where the business model is pointing.
Email me and please include:
- What about the above resonated and where you think there's alignment
- Your thesis area and recent investments closest to this space
- Stage and check size you typically lead or follow
- What a productive first conversation would look like