SOUL.md — Personal Identity for AI Agents
SOUL.md is a markdown file that encodes your personality, voice, worldview, and opinions into a format AI agents can read and embody. Unlike project-level configs like CLAUDE.md or .cursorrules, SOUL.md defines who the AI is — not what it should do. Created by Aaron Mars and built into the OpenClaw ecosystem.
What problem does it solve?
Every AI conversation starts from zero. System prompts get lost between sessions. Fine-tuning is expensive and requires massive datasets. SOUL.md solves this by distilling your identity — your real opinions, writing style, vocabulary, and worldview — into structured markdown that any LLM can read on the fly. The AI's outputs feel authentically continuous with your voice without any model training.
How it differs from other formats
Most AI config files are project-level instructions — they tell an agent how to work within a specific codebase. SOUL.md is fundamentally different: it's a personal identity filethat travels with the person, not the repo.
| Format | Defines | Travels with |
|---|---|---|
| SOUL.md | Who the AI is — personality, voice, opinions | The person |
| CLAUDE.md | Project rules and constraints | The repo |
| .cursorrules | Coding conventions for Cursor | The repo |
| AGENTS.md | Build steps, architecture, conventions | The repo |
| SKILL.md | How to do a specific task | The skill |
File structure
A SOUL.md setup is a directory containing several files that work together:
What goes in SOUL.md
The core file is 30-80 lines of structured markdown. Every line should serve a purpose. Key sections:
The key principle is specificity over generality. Real opinions with reasoning, named influences instead of abstract references, and even contradictions that reflect genuine human inconsistency. “Galaxy-brained cope” beats “nuanced views.”
How to build one
- Interview mode — use a
/soul-buildercommand. The agent interviews you and generates your SOUL.md - Data analysis — feed your existing writing (tweets, essays, conversations) to an AI and let it distill the patterns
- Manual — fill in the template sections yourself. The most intentional approach
Who supports it
SOUL.md is natively supported by OpenClaw. Since it's plain markdown, any agent that reads files from the workspace can use it — Claude Code, ChatGPT, Cursor, and others. The format is agent-agnostic by design.