A chatbot can sound convincing for five minutes without remembering anything.
Then you mention the job interview you were stressed about last week, the name of your dog, or a small detail from a late-night conversation. It replies like none of it happened.
That is where most "AI companion" demos fall apart.
I am building Local Waifu, a desktop AI companion that runs on the user's own Mac or PC. One of the rules I set early was simple: conversations and memories should stay on the machine. No central chat database. No server that needs to be online for the character to remember someone.
The rule sounds clean. Building it was not.






