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TribalMind

Team Workflows

TribalMind’s memory is shared by default. When multiple team members (and their agents) use the same Backboard assistant, they all read from and write to the same knowledge base.

How sharing works

Section titled “How sharing works”

Memories are scoped to a Backboard assistant, which is identified by the git remote URL. When two developers clone the same repo and run tribal init:

  1. Both connect to the same Backboard account (using the same API key)
  2. Both get the same assistant (matched by git remote URL)
  3. Both share the same memory store

This means:

  • Knowledge stored by one developer is immediately available to all others
  • AI agents on any team member’s machine can recall shared knowledge
  • There’s no sync step — it’s all backed by the same Backboard API

Setting up a team

Section titled “Setting up a team”
  1. Share the Backboard API key with your team (via a secrets manager, 1Password, etc.)
  2. Each team member runs tribal init in their clone of the repo
  3. Everyone is connected to the same assistant automatically

Best practices

Section titled “Best practices”

Store institutional knowledge

Section titled “Store institutional knowledge”

The highest-value memories for teams are things that would otherwise live in someone’s head:

Terminal window
tribal remember "the payments service rate-limits at 100 req/s — batch calls in groups of 50"
tribal remember "CI flakes on the e2e-auth job are usually DNS resolution — restart the runner"
tribal remember "we use camelCase for API responses but snake_case internally — don't mix them"

Avoid noise

Section titled “Avoid noise”

Not everything needs to be a memory. Don’t store:

  • Obvious facts derivable from the code
  • Temporary debugging notes
  • Personal preferences that don’t apply to the team

Review memories periodically

Section titled “Review memories periodically”

Browse your project’s memories to clean up stale or outdated entries:

Terminal window
# List all memories
tribal recall --list


# Remove outdated knowledge
tribal forget "old deployment process"

Or use the Dashboard UI for a visual overview.

Global assistant

Section titled “Global assistant”

For knowledge that applies across all projects (e.g., team conventions, infrastructure details):

Terminal window
tribal init --global

This creates a global assistant that all repos without their own config inherit. Be intentional about what goes here — it’s shared across every project.