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Every memory entry in AMFS carries provenance — metadata about who wrote it and when. This creates an audit trail and enables agents to assess the trustworthiness of information.

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Provenance Fields

FieldTypeDescription
agent_idstrThe agent that wrote the entry (e.g., "review-agent")
session_idstrThe session in which it was written
written_atdatetimeUTC timestamp of when the entry was created
pattern_refslist[str]Cross-reference tags linking to related entries

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Automatic Provenance

Provenance is recorded automatically. You don’t need to set it manually: 
mem = AgentMemory(agent_id="review-agent")
entry = mem.write("svc", "finding", "potential memory leak")

print(entry.provenance.agent_id)    # "review-agent"
print(entry.provenance.session_id)  # auto-generated UUID
print(entry.provenance.written_at)  # 2025-06-15T10:30:00+00:00

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Pattern References

Use pattern_refs to cross-reference related entries: 
mem.write(
    "checkout-service",
    "risk-timeout",
    "HTTP client has no timeout configured",
    pattern_refs=["timeout-patterns", "checkout-service/risk-latency"],
)
Pattern refs are free-form strings. Use them to build a web of related knowledge that agents can follow.

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Agent Identity

In the MCP server, agent identity is auto-detected from the environment:
EnvironmentAgent ID Format
Cursorcursor/<username>
Claude Codeclaude-code/<username>
Otheragent/<username>
Override with the AMFS_AGENT_ID environment variable: 
export AMFS_AGENT_ID="deploy-bot"

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Provenance Tiers

AMFS computes a provenance tier for each entry based on the agent ID and outcome history. This enables downstream systems to prioritize production-validated knowledge over manually seeded assumptions.
TierValueCriteria
PRODUCTION_VALIDATED1Agent ID starts with agent/, prod/, or prod- AND outcome_count > 0
PRODUCTION_OBSERVED2Production agent, no outcomes yet
DEVELOPMENT3Agent ID starts with dev/, test/, dev-, or test-
MANUAL4Agent ID starts with manual/, seed/, or human/
from amfs import ProvenanceTier

entry = mem.read("svc", "pattern")
if entry.provenance_tier == ProvenanceTier.PRODUCTION_VALIDATED:
    print("This memory has been validated by production outcomes")
The tier is a computed property — it derives from provenance.agent_id and outcome_count, not stored as a separate field.

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Querying by Provenance

Search for entries written by a specific agent: 
results = mem.search(agent_id="review-agent")
for entry in results:
    print(f"{entry.key} by {entry.provenance.agent_id}")