mcal-ai 0.4.2

Memory-Context Alignment Layer for Goal-Coherent AI Agents

MCAL: Memory-Context Alignment Layer

Intent-Preserving Memory for Goal-Coherent AI Agents

Why MCAL?

Current AI memory systems store facts but lose meaning:

What's Stored	What's Lost
"User chose PostgreSQL"	WHY they chose it over MongoDB
"User wants to visit Japan"	HOW this fits their overall travel goals

MCAL preserves the reasoning behind decisions, not just the conclusions.

Installation

pip install mcal-ai

Framework integrations:

pip install mcal-ai-langgraph  # LangGraph integration
pip install mcal-ai-crewai     # CrewAI integration  
pip install mcal-ai-autogen    # AutoGen integration

Quick Start

import asyncio
from mcal import MCAL

async def main():
    mcal = MCAL(llm_provider="anthropic")  # or "openai", "bedrock"
    
    messages = [
        {"role": "user", "content": "I'm building a fraud detection pipeline"},
        {"role": "assistant", "content": "Let's start with data ingestion..."},
        {"role": "user", "content": "I chose PostgreSQL over MongoDB for storage"},
    ]
    
    # Extract goals, decisions, and reasoning
    result = await mcal.add(messages, user_id="user_123")
    print(f"Extracted {result.unified_graph.node_count} nodes")
    
    # Search with goal-aware retrieval
    results = await mcal.search("What database?", user_id="user_123")
    
    # Get context for LLM prompts
    context = await mcal.get_context("What's next?", user_id="user_123")

asyncio.run(main())

Key Features

• Intent Graph — Hierarchical goal structures (Mission → Goal → Task)
• Reasoning Chains — Store WHY decisions were made, not just conclusions
• Goal-Aware Retrieval — Retrieve based on objective alignment, not just similarity
• Extraction Profiles — decision (rationale/alternatives/trade-offs), conversational (preferences/relationships), comprehensive (both)
• Hybrid Retrieval — Graph traversal + ChunkStore embedding search for maximum recall
• Multi-Provider — Works with Anthropic, OpenAI, and AWS Bedrock
• Standalone Storage — Built-in JSON and SQLite persistence, no external services needed
• Thread-Safe — Safe for concurrent multi-user access
• Tiered Models — Fast/smart model routing for cost-efficient extraction
• Extraction Cache — Skip redundant LLM calls with per-turn cache hits
• Graph Compaction — Automatic deduplication with FACT/PERSON node protection
• GDPR-Ready — Full user data erasure with clear_user_data()

Configuration

mcal = MCAL(
    llm_provider="bedrock",              # "openai", "anthropic", or "bedrock"
    anthropic_api_key="sk-ant-...",       # Or set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY env var
    openai_api_key="sk-...",              # Or set OPENAI_API_KEY env var
    storage_path="~/.mcal",              # Persistent storage location
    enable_persistence=True,              # Cross-session persistence (default)
    max_graph_nodes=500,                  # Max nodes per user graph
    # Extraction profiles — choose the right depth for your domain
    extraction_profile="decision",        # "decision", "conversational", "comprehensive"
    # Hybrid retrieval — embedding search over raw text chunks
    enable_chunk_store=True,              # Combine graph + chunk retrieval
    chunk_size=512,                       # Tokens per chunk
    chunk_overlap=64,                     # Overlap between chunks
    max_chunks_per_user=1000,             # Max chunks stored per user
    # Bedrock options
    bedrock_model="llama-3.3-70b",        # Default extraction model
    bedrock_region="us-east-1",           # AWS region
    # Tiered model routing (fast for simple, smart for complex)
    enable_tiered_extraction=True,
    bedrock_fast_model="llama-3.1-8b",
    bedrock_smart_model="llama-3.3-70b",
    # Extraction cache
    enable_extraction_cache=True,         # Skip repeated LLM calls (default)
    cache_ttl_seconds=86400,              # Cache lifetime (default: 24h)
    # Graph compaction
    compaction_policy="moderate",         # "none", "moderate", or "aggressive"
    compaction_interval=10,               # Compact every N turns
)

LangGraph Integration

from mcal import MCAL
from mcal_langgraph import MCALMemory, MCALMemoryConfig, MCALStore

# Declarative config — all Bedrock/tiered params supported
config = MCALMemoryConfig(
    llm_provider="bedrock",
    bedrock_model="llama-3.3-70b",
    bedrock_region="us-east-1",
    enable_tiered_extraction=True,
    enable_persistence=True,
)

# Or create directly
mcal = MCAL(llm_provider="bedrock")
memory = MCALMemory(mcal=mcal, user_id="user_123")

# Use as LangGraph BaseStore
store = MCALStore(mcal)

# Memory accepts both LangChain Message objects and plain dicts
await memory.add([
    {"role": "user", "content": "We chose Kafka for event streaming"},
    {"role": "assistant", "content": "Good choice for high throughput."},
])

# Search returns goal-aware results
results = await memory.search("streaming architecture")

User Data Management

# Full user data erasure (GDPR Article 17 compliant)
await mcal.clear_user_data("user_123")
# Removes all files, graphs, caches, and in-memory state for the user

# In-memory-only mode — zero disk writes
mcal = MCAL(
    llm_provider="openai",
    storage_path="/tmp/session",
    enable_persistence=False,   # No files written to disk
)

Environment Variables

# Choose your LLM provider
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...    # For Claude
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...           # For GPT-4 / embeddings

# Optional: AWS Bedrock
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1

MCAL auto-detects API keys from environment variables when not passed explicitly.

Benchmark Results

MCAL has been evaluated on two benchmarks spanning 150 to 1020+ conversation turns:

Metric	CTO-150	CTO-300	CTO-1020	LoCoMo (26k tokens)
Decision Retention (DRR)	93.3%	88.8% ± 2.4%	85.3%	—
Cross-Era Recall	—	—	95.6%	—
Token Reduction	62%	73%	88%	84%
Cost Savings	—	—	92%	—
LLM-Judged Quality	—	—	—	80% of full-context

• DRR = keyword-matched probe scoring across all decisions in the conversation
• Cross-era recall = early-session decisions still retrievable after 34 sessions (1020 turns)
• CTO-300 multi-run: 88.8% ± 2.4% across 3 temperatures × 3 repetitions (Wilson CI [85.2%, 91.8%])

What's New in 0.4.1

• First-Class FACT Nodes (#143) — 3 new typed edges (measures, evidence_for, quantifies) replace generic relates edges on FACT nodes, improving edge degree from 1 to 2-4 edges per fact
• Importance Scoring Boost — FACT nodes with concrete numeric values get a +2.0 scoring bonus, making quantitative facts more retrievable
• Query-Aware Fact Retrieval — Quantitative queries ("how much", "what cost", "what percentage") automatically double the fact retrieval budget
• search_facts() API — New method on UnifiedGraph for filtering facts by category and value range
• Richer FACT Formatting — Context assembly now includes value/unit annotations on fact entries
• Version Metadata Fix — Integration packages now report correct __version__ (was stuck at 0.2.9)

What's New in 0.4.0

• Graph Compaction Fixes (#141, #142) — Improved retrieval quality with facts-in-context, expanded edge types, and chunk boost scoring
• CTO-1020 Benchmark — First 1000+ turn evaluation: 85.3% DRR, 95.6% cross-era recall, 88% token reduction
• Statistical Rigor — Multi-run validation with Fisher's exact test (p < 0.05), Wilson score confidence intervals
• LLM-Judged Probes — J-Score evaluation (1-5 scale) complements keyword DRR for nuanced quality measurement

What's New in 0.3.0

• Expanded Relationship Edge Types — 10 new edge types (family, friend, colleague, knows, likes, dislikes, prefers, lives_in, works_at, scheduled) for richer social and personal relationship graphs
• Key Facts & Entities in Search Context — search() now surfaces extracted facts and background entities directly in result.context, improving answer quality for factual queries
• Improved Chunk Retrieval — ChunkStore search returns more results (k=10) with equal weighting to graph results, and conversation excerpts are prioritized in context assembly
• Higher Extraction Fidelity — Increased message processing window preserves more content per extraction batch, reducing information loss during ingestion

Older releases

What's New in 0.2.9

• Configurable Extraction Profiles (#139) — Choose decision, conversational, or comprehensive profiles to optimize extraction for your domain
• Hybrid Retrieval with ChunkStore (#138) — Optional enable_chunk_store=True adds embedding-based retrieval over raw text chunks alongside graph search
• FACT/PERSON Node Protection (#140) — Graph compaction now preserves FACT and PERSON nodes that anchor information (numeric values, names, roles)

What's New in 0.2.7

• GDPR-compliant data erasure — clear_user_data() now removes the entire user directory from disk
• Dict-format message support — MCALMemory accepts plain dicts alongside LangChain Message objects
• In-memory-only mode — enable_persistence=False guarantees zero disk writes
• Full MCALMemoryConfig — Declarative config now supports all Bedrock, tiered model, persistence, and cache parameters
• Tiered routing accuracy — Complexity classifier routes on raw user messages for reliable fast/smart splits
• Extraction cache per-turn support — Cache hits work with agents that pass one turn at a time

Documentation

• GitHub Repository
• Design Document
• LLM Selection Guide
• LangGraph Integration

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Author

Created by Shiva Koreddi