memman 0.16.4

LLM-supervised persistent memory for AI agents - intent-aware graph recall, RAG, and pluggable embeddings for Claude Code, OpenClaw, and NanoClaw.

memman

LLM-supervised persistent memory for AI agents.

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Memory categories

Category	Captures	Example
preference	User-stated likes, dislikes, style	"Prefers snake_case, dislikes ORMs"
decision	Architectural choices with rationale	"Chose SQLite — zero deps, embeddable"
fact	Durable truths about systems/domains	"API rate limit is 100 req/s"
insight	Conclusions from multi-source reasoning	"Beam search outperforms BFS here"
context	Project background, user environment	"Monorepo, deploys to AWS ECS"

See Design & Architecture for details.

How it works

Once installed, the agent runs memman, not the user. Claude Code hooks (or, for OpenClaw, a before_prompt_build plugin) fire on session start, prompt submit, and stop; each reminds the agent to recall before responding and remember after.

Six hook scripts drive the Claude Code lifecycle:

Hook script	Event	Role
prime.sh	SessionStart	loads the behavioral guide; surfaces post-compact recall hint
user_prompt.sh	UserPromptSubmit	reminds the agent to recall before answering
stop.sh	Stop	reminds the agent to evaluate "remember?" after responding
task_recall.sh	PreToolUse (Task)	reminds the agent to recall before sub-agent delegation
compact.sh	PreCompact	drops a flag so the next SessionStart re-recalls context
exit_plan.sh	PreToolUse (ExitPlanMode)	prompts memory storage before plan-to-execute transitions

Inside Claude Code vs outside

memman splits along a hot-path boundary. The agent's turn does only fast local work; everything slow runs in a background worker.

┌─ Inside Claude Code (synchronous) ──┐    ┌─ Background worker ─────────────┐
│                                     │    │                                 │
│  memman recall   (SQLite read)      │    │  drain fires every 60 s under   │
│  memman remember (queue append)     │ →  │  flock on ~/.memman/drain.lock  │
│                                     │    │                                 │
│  No network, no LLM, no embeddings  │    │  LLM extraction → reconcile →   │
│                                     │    │  enrich → embed → edges → DB    │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘    └─────────────────────────────────┘
              │                                          ▲
              └──── queue.db (handoff; not recallable) ──┘

Step	Where	Latency	Notes
memman recall	inside	~50–200 ms	local SQLite read; no network
agent reasoning	inside	—	uses recall results as context
memman remember	inside	~50 ms	enqueue only — no LLM, no embed, no edges
drain trigger	outside	every 60 s+	systemd/launchd timer or serve loop
LLM extraction	outside	network-bound	external LLM provider call
embedding	outside	network-bound	external embedding provider call
edge inference + DB	outside	ms	makes insight visible to future turns

Two invariants follow from this split:

• Hot-path discipline. Nothing the agent runs synchronously hits the network or an LLM. recall is a SQLite read; remember is a blob append.
• One-way visibility. A memory written this turn is not recallable later in the same turn — it lands for future sessions only.

OpenClaw and NanoClaw — same split, different topology

The hot-path/background split is universal across integrations. What changes is what triggers the recall/remember reminders and where the worker runs:

Integration	Trigger (inside)	Worker (outside)	Data location
Claude Code	six lifecycle hook scripts (prime.sh, user_prompt.sh, stop.sh, ...)	systemd timer (Linux) or launchd agent (macOS) on host	~/.memman/data/default/ on host
OpenClaw	before_prompt_build plugin injects recall/remember hints	same host scheduler as Claude Code (shared)	~/.memman/data/default/ on host
NanoClaw	three hook scripts inside the container	memman scheduler serve as PID 1 inside the same container	host ~/.memman/data/{group}/ volume-mounted to container /home/node/.memman/data/default/

OpenClaw sits on the same host as Claude Code: install memman once on the host and the worker is shared. The agent invokes memman via the exec tool rather than Bash-hook nudges.

NanoClaw moves the hot-path boundary into the container. Agent and worker share one container; the SQLite data dir is volume-mounted from ~/.memman/data/{group}/ (rw) on the host so memory survives container restarts, and an optional ~/.memman/data/global/ is mounted read-only into every container for shared knowledge. Each WhatsApp group gets its own container and its own private store. queue.db sits outside the volume mount — pending writes are seconds old and re-driven on the next drain tick, so a restart loses at most one cycle of unprocessed items.

Features

• Hook-driven — six lifecycle hooks handle memory operations automatically.
• LLM-supervised — the host LLM decides what to remember and forget; a worker model handles fact extraction, reconciliation, enrichment, causal inference, and query expansion.
• Four-graph architecture — temporal, entity, causal, and semantic edges.
• Intent-aware recall — graph beam search with RRF fusion; query intent (WHY/WHEN/ENTITY/GENERAL) controls edge weights and result ordering.
• LLM reconciliation — each fact classified as ADD/UPDATE/DELETE/NONE against existing memories.
• Retention lifecycle — importance decay, access-count boosting, immunity rules, garbage collection.
• Pluggable embeddings, per-store sovereignty — registered providers include voyage, openai (any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: OpenAI, vLLM, LiteLLM, ...), openrouter, and ollama. Each store's meta.embed_fingerprint is the runtime authority over its embedder, so one process can serve multiple stores with different embedders. Switch online via memman embed swap or offline via memman embed reembed.
• Pluggable storage backend — SQLite by default; Postgres + pgvector via the memman[postgres] extra. memman migrate copies a store between backends in a single command (idempotent, drain-lock-guarded, dry-run support).

Install

[!IMPORTANT] memman calls external LLM and embedding APIs in the background and requires your own developer API keys. A Claude Pro / Max or ChatGPT Plus subscription does not grant API access — those are chat-app subscriptions, billed separately from the pay-as-you-go developer APIs memman uses for fact extraction and embeddings. Any registered provider works (OpenRouter, OpenAI-compatible endpoints, Voyage, Ollama, ...).

pipx install memman
# or, with the optional Postgres backend:
# pipx install 'memman[postgres]'
memman install

In a TTY, the install wizard prompts for an LLM endpoint URL and an embedding provider, then collects the keys each one needs (masked input). Pre-seeded defaults are accepted with Enter, but any registered provider works equally well — see Provider setup below for the full list. Loopback LLM endpoints (Ollama, local vLLM/LiteLLM) may leave the API key blank. Headless / CI installs need the keys exported (or pre-written into ~/.memman/env) and should pass --no-wizard. After install, the env file at ~/.memman/env (mode 0600) is the canonical source of truth; runtime never reads the shell for installable settings. Change a setting with memman config set KEY VALUE. See CONTRIBUTING.md § Variable reference for the full key list and USAGE.md § Configuration for the precedence model.

Provider setup

memman talks to two external services: an LLM (fact extraction, reconciliation, enrichment, query expansion) and an embedding provider (vector search, graph connectivity). Both are pluggable; the embed side is also per-store via meta.embed_fingerprint.

LLM providers

The LLM client speaks OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions against whichever endpoint you configure. Any vendor exposing an OpenAI-compat shim is reachable without code changes.

Provider	Endpoint	Key (MEMMAN_LLM_API_KEY)
OpenRouter	https://openrouter.ai/api/v1	sk-or-...
OpenAI	https://api.openai.com/v1	sk-...
Anthropic (OpenAI shim)	https://api.anthropic.com/v1	sk-ant-...
Ollama (local)	http://localhost:11434/v1	blank
vLLM / LiteLLM	your endpoint	as required

Switching is a one-env-var edit:

memman config set MEMMAN_LLM_ENDPOINT https://api.openai.com/v1
memman config set MEMMAN_LLM_API_KEY sk-...

Model slugs per role (MEMMAN_LLM_MODEL_FAST / _SLOW_CANONICAL / _SLOW_METADATA) are auto-resolved against /v1/models for OpenRouter endpoints; for any other endpoint, re-run memman install and the wizard prompts for each slug interactively.

Embedding providers

Four embed providers are registered. Each store records its active (provider, model, dim) triple in meta.embed_fingerprint so one process can serve multiple stores fingerprinted to different providers.

Provider	Default model	Key
voyage	voyage-3-lite (512d)	MEMMAN_VOYAGE_API_KEY
openai	text-embedding-3-small	MEMMAN_OPENAI_EMBED_API_KEY + MEMMAN_OPENAI_EMBED_ENDPOINT
openrouter	baai/bge-m3 (1024d)	reuses MEMMAN_OPENROUTER_API_KEY + MEMMAN_OPENROUTER_ENDPOINT
ollama	nomic-embed-text	local; MEMMAN_OLLAMA_HOST (default http://localhost:11434)

20 (provider, model) pairs across voyage, openrouter, and ollama ship with a per-surface calibrated AUTO_SEMANTIC_THRESHOLD — see docs/design/05-lifecycle.md § 5.5.1a for the table. A store on any other (provider, model) falls back to the surface-wide median (bounded mean nDCG@5 loss ~0.014 against the calibrated triples).

Switch on a new install:

memman config set MEMMAN_EMBED_PROVIDER openai
memman config set MEMMAN_OPENAI_EMBED_API_KEY sk-...

Switch a populated store: online via memman embed swap --to <model> --provider <name> (resumable, atomic cutover) or offline via memman embed reembed (requires memman scheduler stop). See USAGE.md § Embedding operations.

pipx install puts the memman binary on your PATH. memman install wires integration into Claude Code, OpenClaw, and/or NanoClaw. The paths it writes:

Path	What	Form
~/.claude/skills/memman/SKILL.md	command reference loaded by the agent	symlink into installed package
~/.claude/hooks/memman/*.sh	six lifecycle hook scripts	symlinks into installed package
~/.claude/settings.json	hook registrations + curated Bash(memman <verb>:*) allow entries	JSON merge
~/.config/systemd/user/memman-enrich.{timer,service}	scheduler unit (Linux)	unit files
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.memman.enrich.plist	scheduler agent (macOS)	plist
~/.memman/env (mode 0600)	canonical config file (API keys + installable knobs)	created or updated in place
~/.memman/logs/	scheduler enrichment worker stdout/stderr	directory

OpenClaw installs swap ~/.claude/ for ~/.openclaw/. NanoClaw runs the same paths inside the container (see OpenClaw and NanoClaw above).

Target a specific environment:

memman install --target openclaw
memman install --target claude-code

For NanoClaw (agents inside Linux containers), install memman on the host as above, then run the /add-memman skill in your NanoClaw project — it modifies the Dockerfile, adds a container skill, and wires volume mounts. Each WhatsApp group gets its own isolated store, with optional global shared memory (read-only).

Start a new Claude Code session (or restart the OpenClaw gateway) to activate.

For editable installs and the test suite, see Development.

Updating

pipx upgrade memman

Hook scripts and SKILL.md are symlinks into the installed package, so they refresh automatically. guide.md is read live from the package via importlib.resources. Asset-only changes propagate without re-running memman install.

Uninstall

memman uninstall            # remove hooks, skill, settings entries, scheduler unit
pipx uninstall memman       # remove the memman binary

Either can run alone. memman uninstall never deletes anything under ~/.memman/ — your memory store, API keys, and scheduler logs all survive.

FAQ

Do different sessions share memory? By default, all sessions use the same default store — a decision remembered in one session is available in every future session.

Can I isolate memory per project or agent? Use named stores:

memman store create work        # create a new store
memman store use work           # set as default
MEMMAN_STORE=work memman recall "query"  # or use env var per-process

Different agents/processes can use different stores via the MEMMAN_STORE environment variable.

How do I switch stores automatically per directory? Set MEMMAN_STORE with a directory-scoped env loader like direnv:

cd ~/projects/work
echo 'export MEMMAN_STORE=work' > .envrc
direnv allow

Every shell, agent, and subprocess started in that directory now resolves to the work store. For the full comparison of alternatives (--store flag, project CLAUDE.md rule, global memman store use) and a note on MEMMAN_DATA_DIR, see USAGE.md § Stores.

How do I customize the behavior? The shipped guide.md (behavioral policy) and SKILL.md (command reference) live inside the installed package and update on pipx upgrade memman. To change behavior, edit the package source (editable installs pick up changes live) or propose a change upstream.

How does memman remember work? It appends a row to queue.db and returns in ~50 ms. The scheduler drains every 60 s; writes become recallable after the next drain. See Inside Claude Code vs outside.

How do I pause the scheduler? memman scheduler stop sets the persistent state to STOPPED and disables the timer on systemd/launchd hosts. While stopped, memman is recall-only: remember, replace, forget, graph link, graph rebuild, and insights protect exit with Scheduler is stopped; cannot <verb>. Resume with memman scheduler start. See USAGE.md § Scheduler for the full verb list.

Upgrading? After pipx upgrade memman, re-run memman install to refresh the scheduler unit's ExecStart line. make e2e and memman doctor catch unit-file drift.

Development

make dev            # editable Poetry install with dev deps (for running tests)
make test           # unit tests (pytest)
make e2e            # end-to-end test suite
pipx install -e .   # editable pipx install (for wiring Claude Code integration)
memman install      # deploy integration
memman uninstall    # remove integration

Dependencies: Python 3.11+, Click, httpx, cachetools, tqdm, numpy. Required at runtime: a key for the configured LLM endpoint (MEMMAN_LLM_API_KEY) and a key for the active embedding provider (env var varies — see Provider setup). Both sides are pluggable via one env-var edit. See USAGE.md § Configuration for the precedence model.

Documentation

• Design & Architecture — philosophy, algorithms, integration design
• Usage & Reference — CLI commands, configuration, embedding support
• Architecture Diagrams — system architecture, pipelines, lifecycle management

References

• MAGMA — Jiang et al. A Multi-Graph based Agentic Memory Architecture. 2025. Four-graph model (temporal, entity, causal, semantic) with intent-adaptive retrieval and beam search traversal.
• RRF — Cormack, Clarke & Buttcher. Reciprocal Rank Fusion outperforms Condorcet and individual Rank Learning Methods. SIGIR 2009. Multi-signal anchor fusion with k=60.

License

MIT