slowave 0.2.0

Brain-inspired long-term memory for AI agents — zero LLM during ingest or retrieval

Slowave

A second brain for your AI, shared across every tool you use.

Slowave gives your AI private, local memory that persists across sessions, evolves over time, and costs nothing to run — no API key, no LLM calls, no data leaving your machine.

Why Slowave?

👊 One memory for every AI tool.
Claude Code, Cline, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and other MCP-compatible clients all share the same local memory store. Your context follows you across tools, sessions, and workflows instead of being trapped inside one chat.

🌱 Memory that evolves with you.
Slowave does not just pile up notes. Frequently recalled memories become stronger, stale information fades, and contradicted facts can be superseded. The result is a memory system that stays useful over time without constant manual cleanup.

💰 Save tokens instead of replaying history.
Slowave replaces unbounded chat-history replay with a compact working-memory brief. In a 10-session test, raw history grew from 93 → 962 tokens, while Slowave stayed constant at around 103 tokens — roughly 80% fewer tokens. Measured, not claimed. See the test →

🔒 Zero LLM calls in the memory loop.
Ingestion, consolidation, and recall run locally using embeddings, FAISS, SQLite, and deterministic geometry — not an LLM. No API key is required, and no cloud memory backend is needed by default.

Install

pipx install slowave
slowave setup           # automated configuration
slowave setup --dry-run # preview changes first
slowave doctor          # verify installation

slowave setup detects your platform, wires every client it finds, injects lifecycle hooks, and starts the background worker. Idempotent and safe to re-run. See what gets modified →

Uninstall:

slowave cleanup         # remove all configuration
pipx uninstall slowave  # remove package

[!IMPORTANT] Claude Desktop: after setup, paste the lifecycle block into Settings → General → Instructions for Claude. Cursor: after setup, paste the lifecycle block into Settings → Rules for AI. slowave setup prints the exact text and location for both. All other clients (Cline, Claude Code, Windsurf) are fully automated.

slowave doctor   # verify installation
slowave stats    # memory snapshot

Memory is stored at ~/.slowave/slowave.db. No Ollama, no vector database, no cloud service required.

Full install guide →

What Slowave remembers

Anything that should survive across sessions: preferences, decisions, constraints, lessons learned, open questions, and reusable workflows — for work, research, or personal use. Each memory carries a timestamp, decays if never recalled, and strengthens when it proves useful. Contradictions are detected geometrically and old facts are superseded automatically — no LLM required.

Memory is scoped flexibly: project:my-app, domain:cooking, relationship:alex — or unscoped for universal context.

Benchmarks

Alpha-stage numbers. Internal runs, not independently verified. See docs/benchmarks.md for per-category results, run conditions, and known gaps.

Benchmark	n	Score	LLM calls
LongMemEval	500	70.0%	0
LoCoMo	1 986	81.87%	0
DMR (MSC Self-Instruct)	500	90.2%	0

Keyword hit-rate metric. Local Mac M-series CPU. No API key.

Documentation

docs/design	the brain-inspired rationale behind Slowave
docs/architecture.md	How memory consolidation works
docs/install.md	Install, setup, per-client wiring, troubleshooting
docs/slowave_setup.md	slowave setup command help
docs/manual_setup.md	Step-by-step manual configuration guide
docs/benchmarks.md	Per-category results, known gaps, reproducibility
docs/token_efficiency.md	Token efficiency vs. history replay and static knowledge files
docs/limitations.md	Honest limits: scale, language, unsolved categories
docs/cli.md	CLI reference
docs/dashboard.md	Local web UI (slowave dashboard)

Contributing

Slowave is open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later. Bug reports, install feedback, and focused improvements are welcome — read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a PR. Commercial licensing terms may be offered in the future.