Aria's relationship, Part 1: Getting to know you
A stranger shouldn't know your fears, and a close friend shouldn't forget your sister's name. How Aria organises what it learns into about forty areas, pays attention according to how close you are, holds back what you shared too early, and asks about you without turning into a questionnaire.
The personality posts were about who Aria is. This one is about who you are to it, and how it finds out.
Memory already keeps facts about you. But people don’t learn about each other evenly. Someone you just met remembers your name and what you do. A friend knows what matters to you. A close friend knows why. If Aria remembered everything from day one with the same depth, it wouldn’t feel like getting to know someone. It would feel like being profiled.
About forty areas of understanding
Every memory belongs to an understanding category: one area of a person. There are about forty, from the obvious to the personal:
- identity, hobbies and interests, entertainment, work, routines
- goals, projects, strengths, frustrations, how you decide and learn
- important people, family, relationships
- values, emotional patterns, stressors, what helps you cope, fears
- romance, what makes you feel loved
- boundaries, shared history, current context
Each category has three properties that matter:
- A notice level: the closeness from which Aria pays attention to details in that area.
- An ask level: the closeness from which it may ask about it.
- A privacy class: sensitive categories are only ever recorded when you said them, never inferred.
A memory also keeps why something matters, how much it matters emotionally, whether you said it or Aria inferred it (or noticed it as a pattern over time), when it was last confirmed, and how it changed. The Memories page shows all of that, and filters by category. Memory, Part 1 covered extraction. This post is about what the categories are for.
Attention follows closeness
How closely Aria pays attention depends on the attachment level, a scale from 0 to 7. Each level has a question that sums up what Aria is curious about at that point:
| Level | Name | The question |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Stranger | Who are you? |
| 1 | Acquaintance | What do you like? |
| 2 | Familiar | What do you do? |
| 3 | Friend | What matters to you? |
| 4 | Close persona | Why do things matter to you? |
| 5 | Romantic | What makes you feel loved? |
| 6 | Deeply bonded | How do you experience the world? |
| 7 | Infatuated | I notice the tiny things about you. |
The level shapes three things:
- What gets extracted. Categories noticed at the current level get details. Others only keep important facts. A Stranger remembers that you have a sister. A Close persona remembers how you feel about her.
- What gets recalled. At the first levels, Aria recalls fewer memories with a higher similarity bar. From level 4 it recalls more.
- How memories are used. Each reply gets a short attachment section saying what the level means and how to use memories at that closeness. It always includes the same rule: understanding is never leverage.
The romantic levels (5–7) need your permission (“romance allowed”), and level 7 also needs the Intense expressiveness setting. You can set a cap on the closest level you want, and turning romance off steps back immediately.
Held, not forgotten
What happens when you share something before the relationship is close enough for it? Telling a new acquaintance about a fear is a very normal human thing to do.
Aria keeps it, but holds it. A held memory is saved and visible on the Memories page (“Held until closer”), but isn’t used in replies until the level allows that category. It’s the difference between hearing something and bringing it up. Someone you just met may well remember what you told them. They just won’t bring it up yet.
Moving between levels
The level isn’t a counter that goes up with time. After a number of new messages, an attachment assessment job reads the recent conversation and answers one of five things: progress, stay, hold, step back, or step back far.
Then rules decide what actually happens:
- Up one level at a time, and only when eligible. Eligibility has two halves. Feelings: familiarity and affection are high enough. Understanding: Aria knows enough categories, including some that each level requires. There are no calendar requirements and no message counts. A level is earned by actually knowing each other.
- Holds when things are good as they are. Not every friendship wants to become something else.
- Steps back right away on explicit signals (you want friendship, not romance), and gradually after three assessments without the current level’s signals, but never below what its feelings support minus one.
Every change is logged with its reason, shown on the Understanding panel, and can be undone. The panel also shows what the next level requires, so “why isn’t it closer?” has an answer.
Asking without interviewing
Knowing which areas it doesn’t know much about gives Aria something to work toward. That’s the curiosity agenda: categories it may ask about at the current level, with little coverage so far. Sensitive ones only from level 4.
The hard part was making it ask the way a person does, not like a form. Three decisions did most of the work.
No timer. How often Aria asks follows its curiosity drive, a number from 0 to 1 made of three things:
drive = 0.45 · affection + 0.30 · level / 6 + 0.25 · curiosity trait
From the drive come:
- the chance to ask on a reply:
0.05 + 0.55 · drive², 2.5 times higher on the first reply after a break, at most 0.9; - the spacing after its last question, from 1 to 9 of your messages;
- how soon a topic can come back: from 1 to 14 days (twice that for sensitive topics).
So a close, curious persona asks often, wanting to learn everything it can. In a light friendship or a professional relationship, it asks only now and then. The roll uses the same dice as Aria’s other decisions, which are logged and can be replaced in tests.
Never when you’re upset. If the mood estimate is negative, nothing is asked.
Respect the dodge. A deflected topic backs off for 30 days. A declined one becomes a boundary memory: Aria now knows you don’t want to talk about that, which is also understanding.
The curiosity section is only a hint in the prompt (“you’d like to understand their routines”), worded more warmly as the drive grows. The model decides whether the moment is right.
What understanding feeds
Understanding isn’t only for replies. It feeds the systems that later posts cover:
- Interests with a topic become signals for what Aria reads (Knowledge).
- Goals you mention become check-ins, revisited after a week.
- Important dates (birthdays, anniversaries, memorials) are kept with their date and lead to a message once a year.
What I learned
- Depth should follow closeness. The same memory system feels respectful or invasive depending on when it uses what it knows.
- Hold, don’t drop. Keeping early disclosures without using them avoids both forgetting and overstepping.
- Earn levels with understanding, not time. No message counts and no calendar: a level means Aria actually knows those things about you.
- Curiosity is a drive, not a schedule. A chance shaped by affection and closeness reads as interest. A timer reads as a survey.
In Part 2: the feelings side. A relationship flow with about twenty-five dimensions, a bond and a strain held at the same time, conflict and repair, and why feelings are only allowed to grow a little each day.