How to teach AI your team's coding conventions

Use Memories to make Fossy learn your coding preferences, architectural decisions, and team conventions through natural conversation.

Every team has unwritten context — technology preferences, naming conventions, architectural decisions, migration details. Instead of documenting them all upfront, you can teach Fossy through natural conversation so future reviews are more relevant and repetitive bad suggestions go away.

How it works

When you talk to Fossy in PR comments, it detects when you’re stating codebase context or a team preference and automatically saves it as a Memory. Memories are then applied as high-priority context in all future code reviews and conversations.

Explicit teaching

Directly tell Fossy to remember something:

@fossy remember: this repo mirrors a third-party API, so some payload fields intentionally stay snake_case.

@fossy please remember: this service follows hexagonal architecture and keeps adapters at the edge.

Implicit learning

State a preference naturally — Fossy picks it up:

@fossy this repo mirrors a third-party API, so some payload fields intentionally stay snake_case.

@fossy in this service, tests usually live next to the implementation files rather than in a central test folder.

@fossy the billing module is mid-migration, so prefer incremental fixes over broad refactors.

What Fossy won’t save

Fossy is selective about what becomes a memory:

• Temporary instructions (“fix this now”, “skip this for today”)
• Questions (“what’s the deadline?”)
• Debugging chatter (“I see an error”)
• Vague statements without actionable information
• Requests scoped to a single PR or task

Memory scopes

Each memory applies at a specific level:

Scope	Example
Directory	”In src/components/ui, always use our design system tokens”
Repository	”This repo uses hexagonal architecture”
Organization	”All repos use ESLint flat config”

Approval workflow

If you want to review AI-generated memories before they take effect, enable LLM-generated memories approval in settings. Memories will enter a pending state until you approve them.

Managing memories

Go to Code Review Settings → Fossy Rules → Memories tab to view, edit, or delete memories. You can also create memories manually from the UI.

For details, see Fossy Rules — Memories.