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# Direct human editability

Direct human editability means a person can open the memory store in a standard editor (VS Code, Notepad, vim) and modify it directly. File-based memory systems use plain text formats like Markdown or JSON that any tool can read and write without a runtime or API layer.

## Trade-offs

Editable files are maximally accessible but lack structural guarantees. A typo, a malformed JSON key, or an accidental deletion can silently corrupt state. There is no built-in [versioned history](/versioned-history) unless the user maintains it (e.g. via git), and no [schema constraints](/schema-constraints) to reject invalid edits.

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## How Neotoma compares

Neotoma stores data in a structured, schema-validated format. While the underlying storage is not a plain text file you open directly, entities are fully accessible and modifiable through the CLI and MCP actions. Every modification goes through the observation pipeline, preserving [auditable change logs](/auditable-change-log) and [deterministic state evolution](/deterministic-state-evolution).

\# Read current state
neotoma entities get <entity\_id>

# Update via a new observation (preserves history)
neotoma store --json='\[{"entity\_type":"contact","name":"Ana Rivera","city":"Barcelona"}\]'

Platform memory (ChatGPT, Claude) may offer in-app UIs to view or edit memories, but the underlying store is not exposed as an editable file. See [memory models](/memory-models) for the full comparison.