slowave 0.5.6

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

Slowave

One memory for every AI tool you use.

Slowave gives Claude Code, Cline, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Windsurf, and other MCP-compatible tools access to the same persistent memory.

Instead of each tool forgetting in isolation, Slowave gives them one shared memory layer that:

👉 persists across sessions
👉 follows you across tools
👉 keeps project context outside any single assistant
👉 reduces your token usage
👉 evolves over time
👉 costs $0 — no LLM in the loop
👉 runs locally on your CPU

Why try Slowave?

Most AI tools have isolated memory.

One assistant may know what happened yesterday, while another starts from zero. Even when a tool remembers something, that memory usually stays trapped inside that tool.

That means you keep repeating the same context every time you switch client, model, workspace, or session:

• how your project is structured;
• how tests and releases work;
• what decisions were already made;
• what preferences you have;
• what previous debugging sessions discovered;
• what should no longer be suggested.

Slowave gives AI tools a centralized memory layer.

The memory is local-first, but the product idea is broader: one memory substrate shared by all your AI tools.

Slowave is useful if you want:

• one memory shared across multiple AI tools;
• persistent memory across sessions;
• context that survives switching clients or models;
• local-first storage;
• no LLM calls in the memory loop;
• scoped project memory;
• adaptive recall with reinforcement, decay, and supersession;
• compact working-memory briefs instead of huge pasted context blocks.

In short:

Slowave helps every AI tool start from the same memory.

The big picture

┌────────────┐   work with   ┌─────────────┐
│            │ ────────────▶ │ Claude Code │ ◀───┐
│            │               └─────────────┘     │    (mcp)
│    You     │               ┌─────────────┐     │    context         ┌────────────┐
│  (local)   │ ────────────▶ │    Cline    │ ◀───┼──▶ remember  ◀───▶ │  Slowave   │◀──────┐
│            │               └─────────────┘     │    recall          │  (local)   │       │
│            │               ┌─────────────┐     │    procedure       └─────┬──────┘       │
│            │ ────────────▶ │   Cursor    │ ◀───┘    feedback              │ evolves      │
└────────────┘               └──────┬──────┘                                │ decays       │
                                    │                                       │ reinforces   │
                                    │                                       │ consolidates │
                                    ▼                                       │ learns       │
                              ┌────────────┐                                │ workflows    │
                              │    LLM     │                                └──────────────┘                 
                              └────────────┘

Install

pipx install slowave
slowave setup --dry-run
slowave setup
slowave doctor

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 →

[!NOTE] The default text encoder downloads its model from HuggingFace on first use (~45 MB); subsequent runs work fully offline.

[!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.

Privacy: Slowave stores all memory (facts, episodes, embeddings, logs) locally in a plain SQLite database file. No memory leaves your machine — it's never sent to a cloud service, and the database file is unencrypted (you can inspect it with SQLite tools). If you store sensitive information, protect the database file using OS-level permissions or full-disk encryption.

Full install guide →

What makes Slowave different?

👊 Central memory across every AI tool.

Claude Code, Cline, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible client can read from and write to the same memory store. Fix a bug in Claude Code tonight — Cline can recall the lesson tomorrow. Decide on an architecture in Claude Desktop — it can surface in your next coding session. Context follows you across tools instead of dying inside one chat.

🧠 Adaptive memory, not just notes or a vector index.
Slowave memory changes with use: useful memories are reinforced, stale ones decay, and outdated ones can be superseded. Recall is shaped by salience, time, scope, and feedback — not just raw vector similarity.

⚙️ Procedural memory: workflows that stick.
Slowave stores reusable procedures — "how we do deploys in this repo", "steps to implement a new feature across projects" or simply "how this spaghetti recipe should be cooked". Recall them by goal and situation, not by keyword search. Your agents learn habits, not just facts.

🔒 Fully local, zero LLM calls.
Ingestion, consolidation, and recall run on your machine using embeddings, FAISS, and SQLite — no LLM in the memory loop, no API key, no data sent to a cloud memory backend. Memory operations cost $0 per query.

💰 Compact context instead of history replay.
Slowave injects a small working-memory brief instead of replaying full chat history. In internal tests, this reduced context size by 86% over 20 sessions while preserving high recall quality. See the test →

What Slowave remembers

Anything that should survive across sessions and tools: 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, known gaps, and reproducibility.

On fact-recall benchmarks, Slowave reaches scores competitive with LLM-based memory systems — with zero LLM calls. Gaps remain in implicit preference inference and behavioral style drift, which require LLM reasoning that Slowave deliberately avoids. See known gaps →

Benchmark	n	Slowave	Published / reported comparator	Slowave LLM calls
LoCoMo (multi-session recall)	1 986	81%	Zep 75.1% · LangMem 58.1% · GPT-4 fine-tuned ~76%	0
LongMemEval (full haystack)	500	93.4%	Mem0 94.4%†	0
StaleMemory — concrete preference drift‡	900	86–89%	no published baseline	0

† Mem0 uses GPT-5 as judge; Slowave uses keyword-overlap. The 1 pp LME gap falls within the expected difference between these two scoring protocols — the gap would likely narrow on the same scorer, but this has not been directly measured. The LoCoMo gap is large enough to hold across any reasonable scorer. All Slowave runs: zero LLM calls, fully local. Full methodology →

‡ Concrete-keyword subset of 1,200 total StaleMemory scenarios. Abstract behavioral drift (the remaining 300 scenarios) scores 0–1% — a structural limit of retrieval-only systems. See known gaps →

How Slowave compares

Most agent-memory systems focus on extracting and retrieving memories for one LLM-based agent or application. Slowave takes a different path: it is a centralized, MCP-native memory substrate shared across tools, where the memory lifecycle itself — recall, reinforcement, decay, supersession, feedback, and procedural reuse — runs without an LLM in the loop.

	MEMORY.md	Plain RAG	Mem0 / Zep / Graphiti	Letta / LangMem	Slowave
Persistent across sessions	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Shared across MCP tools	⚠️	⚠️	⚠️	⚠️	✅
Local-first by default	✅	✅	⚠️	⚠️	✅
Adaptive recall over time	❌	❌	⚠️	⚠️	✅
Reinforcement / decay without LLM calls	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅
Supersession / stale-memory handling	❌	❌	✅	⚠️	✅
Procedural memory / workflows	⚠️	❌	⚠️	✅	✅
Zero memory API cost	✅	✅	❌	⚠️	✅

✅ = native or central capability.
⚠️ = possible, partial, backend-dependent, or LLM-mediated.
❌ = not a primary/default capability.

Dashboard

Keep Slowave always under control through the local dashboard.

You use it, Slowave will start connecting the dots

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, strengths, known gaps, reproducibility
docs/token_efficiency.md	Token efficiency vs. history replay and static knowledge files
docs/limitations.md	Capability gaps, design trade-offs, deployment limits
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.