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Persistent, queryable knowledge storage for AI agents. Markdown source + SQLite + manifest fallback.

Project description

engram-agent-memory

Give your AI agent a memory that survives anything.

engram-agent-memory lets AI agents store knowledge, look it up instantly, and keep working even if the database goes down — because your knowledge is always backed by plain text files.


The problem it solves

AI agents are forgetful by default. Every session starts fresh. Workarounds like dumping everything into a context window are slow, expensive, and hit limits fast.

engram-agent-memory gives your agent a proper knowledge base:

  • Store what it learns, organized by type
  • Search it in milliseconds
  • Recover automatically if anything breaks

How it works

You keep your knowledge in simple markdown files — one topic per file, organized with a few lines of header info. engram-agent-memory builds a fast search index on top of those files, so your agent can find exactly what it needs without reading everything.

If the index ever fails or gets corrupted, the agent falls back to a backup index file that never goes down. No data loss, no downtime.

Your markdown files
       ↓
   Fast search index (SQLite)
       ↓
   Your agent gets answers in milliseconds

   (If index breaks → backup index takes over automatically)

Quick start

Install

pip install engram-agent-memory

The distribution name is engram-agent-memory (the engram-memory name on PyPI belongs to an unrelated project). The import name is just engram.

Or install from source:

pip install git+https://github.com/Driftah9/engram-agent-memory.git
# or, editable:
git clone https://github.com/Driftah9/engram-agent-memory.git
cd engram-agent-memory && pip install -e .

Pure standard library — no runtime dependencies. Import with from engram import ....

Create a knowledge file

---
name: user-profile
type: user
description: Who the user is and their preferences
---

Name: Alice
Location: San Francisco
Prefers: concise answers, no jargon

## Preferences
Short responses unless asked for detail.

## Constraints
Budget is limited. Always flag costs upfront.

Use it in your agent

from engram import MemoryStore

# Point it at your folder of markdown files
store = MemoryStore("./knowledge")
store.build()  # Builds the search index

# Search for what you need
results = store.query("budget")
# → Tells you which file and which lines have the answer

# Read just those lines — not the whole file
content = store.read_lines(results[0]["file_path"],
                           results[0]["line_start"],
                           results[0]["line_end"])
# → "Budget is limited. Always flag costs upfront."

# Or ask in plain language — smart_recall handles full sentences
hits = store.smart_recall("what's the user's spending situation?")
# → [{'text': '[user-profile > Constraints] Budget is limited...',
#     'source': 'engram:user_profile.md:12-14', 'score': 0.9}]

What kind of knowledge can it store?

engram-agent-memory uses four categories to keep things organized:

Type What goes here Examples
user Who the user is Name, location, preferences, constraints
feedback Rules you've learned "User hates bullet lists", "always confirm before deleting"
project Ongoing work Current goals, decisions made, blockers
reference Outside information Research findings, documentation notes

Your agent can search all of them at once, or narrow to just the type it needs.


Key features

Fast search Find relevant knowledge in under a millisecond. Works even across hundreds of files.

Precise retrieval Results include the exact file and line numbers where the answer lives — not the whole document. Your agent loads only what it needs.

Natural-language recall smart_recall() takes a full sentence, strips the noise words, and returns the best-matching section with its line pointers — so plain-language questions work, not just keyword lookups.

Crash-proof fallback If the search index fails, a backup JSON index takes over with no code changes required. Your knowledge is never lost.

Relations between topics (MOC graph) Link knowledge files together — either with see_also in the header or by writing [[node-name]] inline in the body. Your agent can follow those connections automatically, turning your notes into a navigable map of content.

No external services Runs entirely on your machine. No APIs, no cloud services, no vendor lock-in. Just Python and a SQLite file.


When to use engram-agent-memory

Good fit:

  • Single AI agent that needs to remember things across sessions
  • Small team sharing a knowledge base
  • Projects where you want knowledge version-controlled in git
  • Anywhere you need fast, reliable retrieval without setting up a server

Not the right fit:

  • Large-scale distributed systems with many simultaneous writers
  • Semantic/similarity search (use a vector database for that)
  • Terabytes of data (this is designed for files-on-disk scale)

Full documentation


Contributing

Found a bug? Have an idea? Read CONTRIBUTING.md first — it explains what makes a good contribution. Then open an issue.


License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute. See LICENSE.


Built by Stryder Tech · Questions: admin@strydertech.com

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