The thing about kids is that the details pile up faster than you can write them down. The allergy list grows. The schedule shifts. The stories — the ones you swore you'd remember forever — blur within a week. You tell yourself you'll write them down. You don't. By the time you reach for the memory, it's already softer than it was.
I use Eigen Mesh for the boring part and the tender part. Both, I think, deserve a memory that doesn't belong to a chatbot company.
The allergy list that actually travels with me
My youngest is allergic to walnuts and pecans. Not peanuts — that one's been ruled out twice. The distinction matters at restaurants and birthday parties, and it matters more when someone else is feeding them: a grandparent, a babysitter, a school trip.
I keep the list in Eigen Mesh. Not as a spreadsheet — as the things I've actually said. "Walnuts and pecans, confirmed by the allergist in March, EpiPen in the blue backpack, expires September." That's the entry. When I'm at a restaurant and the menu says "mixed nuts," I ask Eigen Mesh: "What do I need to know about nuts?" It tells me, in my own words.
The reason this lives in Eigen Mesh and not in a notes app is the MCP part. When I'm in Cursor, working, and my partner messages me about the school trip lunch form, I can ask my assistant: "What are the allergy notes for the field trip form?" The assistant pulls from my memory. I don't have to context-switch into another app and scroll. The memory comes to where I already am.
That's the whole pitch, for parents: the memory follows you. You're not opening a special app at a special time. You're just asking, wherever you are.
The schedule I don't have to maintain
I don't put the school calendar in Eigen Mesh. That's a calendar's job. What I do put in is the texture around it: "Pickup is at 3:15 on Wednesdays because of the early-release day — don't schedule meetings then." "Swim is Thursday, but the pool is closed the last week of the month, so it shifts to Tuesday that week." "The birthday party Saturday is at the indoor climbing place, not the park — they moved it because of rain."
These are the things that don't fit cleanly in a calendar invite. They're the parenthetical notes. They're the reason a calendar alone isn't enough.
When I ask Eigen Mesh on a Thursday morning, "What's the deal with swim today?" it reminds me about the pool closure without me having to remember I made a note. The memory does the remembering. I do the parenting.
The stories, kept gently
Here's the part I care about most, and the part I was most careful about.
Kids say things. "When I grow up I want to dig holes for a living." "The moon is following us home." "I don't like the way the piano sounds when the man with the hat plays it." These are the things you swear you'll remember and don't. They're also the things you don't want mined, profiled, or used to train a model of your child.
I capture them in Eigen Mesh. Voice, usually — in the car, on the walk home, while I still remember the exact phrasing. The capture is deliberate. I'm not recording my kid. I'm recording one sentence, once, because I chose to. That's the difference between a memory and a surveillance system.
The entries are mine. They're not used to build a profile of my child's preferences. They're not fed to a recommendation engine. They sit in a system I can self-host, under Apache 2.0, on hardware I control — or in the hosted version, on EU servers, with a company that doesn't train on the contents.
When my kid is older, I can hand them a folder of the things they said. That's the goal. Not a feed. A folder.
What I don't use it for
I don't put medical records in it. I don't put other people's kids' names in it. I don't put anything that would embarrass my child if they read it at twenty. The system doesn't decide this for me — I do. That's the point of deliberate capture. You say it, you meant it, it's saved. The corollary is: if you didn't say it, it isn't there. There's no inferred profile of your family assembled from your inbox.
This is the part I'd argue with any parent about. The default AI memory features in chatbots build a profile of your kid by reading what you type about them. Eigen Mesh doesn't. It only knows what you handed it. Smaller dataset, sharper edges, your call on every line.
The cost, and the trade
100 free credits — about 100 to 150 thoughts, which is a couple of months of kid-sayings and allergy updates for me. After that, €3.99 a month. Less than the snack budget for a single soccer practice. You can also self-host it for free if you'd rather run it on your own machine.
Either way, the data stays yours. Apache 2.0, github.com/hikaru90/eigen. EU servers for the hosted version. No training on your data.
If you're the family's memory
If you're the one who remembers the allergies, the schedules, the birthday-party location changes, and the things your kid said in the car — and you're tired of being the only one — try handing some of it to a memory that holds it for you.
Get early access to Eigen Mesh. Start with the allergy list. See if it comes back when you need it.