Skip to main content

Persistent identity and memory for any LLM agent — markdown-native, provider-agnostic

Project description

soul.py 🧠

Your AI forgets everything when the conversation ends. soul.py fixes that.

from hybrid_agent import HybridAgent

agent = HybridAgent()
agent.ask("My name is Prahlad and I'm building an AI research lab.")

# New process. New session. Memory persists.
agent = HybridAgent()
result = agent.ask("What do you know about me?")
print(result["answer"])
# → "You're Prahlad, building an AI research lab."

No database. No server. Just markdown files and smart retrieval.


▶ Live Demos

Version Demo What it shows
v0.1 soul.themenonlab.com Memory persists across sessions
v1.0 soulv1.themenonlab.com Semantic RAG retrieval
v2.0 soulv2.themenonlab.com Auto query routing: RAG + RLM

Install

pip install soul-agent          # core (zero deps)
pip install soul-agent[anthropic]
pip install soul-agent[openai]

Quickstart

soul init   # creates SOUL.md and MEMORY.md
# v0.1 — simple markdown memory (great starting point)
from soul import Agent
agent = Agent(provider="anthropic")
agent.ask("Remember this.")

# v2.0 — automatic RAG + RLM routing (this repo's default)
from hybrid_agent import HybridAgent
agent = HybridAgent()  # auto-detects best retrieval per query
result = agent.ask("What do you know about me?")
print(result["answer"])
print(result["route"])   # "RAG" or "RLM"

How it works

soul.py uses two markdown files as persistent state:

File Purpose
SOUL.md Identity — who the agent is, how it behaves
MEMORY.md Memory — timestamped log of every exchange

v2.0 adds a query router that automatically dispatches to the right retrieval strategy:

Your query
    ↓
Router (fast LLM call)
    ├── FOCUSED  (~90%) → RAG — vector search, sub-second
    └── EXHAUSTIVE (~10%) → RLM — recursive synthesis, thorough

Architecture based on: RAG + RLM: The Complete Knowledge Base Architecture


Branches

Branch Description Best for
main v2.0 — RAG + RLM hybrid (default) Production use
v2.0-rag-rlm Same as main, versioned Pinning to v2
v1.0-rag RAG only, no RLM Simpler setup
v0.1-stable Pure markdown, zero deps Learning / prototyping

v2.0 API

result = agent.ask("What is my name?")

result["answer"]        # the response
result["route"]         # "RAG" or "RLM"
result["router_ms"]     # router latency
result["retrieval_ms"]  # retrieval latency
result["total_ms"]      # total latency
result["rag_context"]   # retrieved chunks (RAG path)
result["rlm_meta"]      # chunk stats (RLM path)

v2.0 Setup

agent = HybridAgent(
    soul_path="SOUL.md",
    memory_path="MEMORY.md",
    mode="auto",                    # "auto" | "rag" | "rlm"
    qdrant_url="...",               # or set QDRANT_URL env var
    qdrant_api_key="...",           # or QDRANT_API_KEY
    azure_embedding_endpoint="...", # or AZURE_EMBEDDING_ENDPOINT
    azure_embedding_key="...",      # or AZURE_EMBEDDING_KEY
    k=5,                            # RAG retrieval count
)

Falls back to BM25 (keyword) if Qdrant/Azure not configured.


Why not LangChain / LlamaIndex / MemGPT?

Those are orchestration frameworks. soul.py is a primitive — persistent identity and memory you can drop into anything you're building.

  • No framework lock-in — works with any LLM provider
  • Human-readable — SOUL.md and MEMORY.md are plain text
  • Version-controllable — git diff your agent's memories
  • Composable — use just the parts you need

License

MIT

Citation

@software{menon2026soul,
  author = {Menon, Prahlad G.},
  title  = {soul.py: Persistent Identity and Memory for LLM Agents},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://github.com/menonpg/soul.py}
}

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

soul_agent-0.1.1.tar.gz (13.1 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

soul_agent-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl (13.0 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file soul_agent-0.1.1.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: soul_agent-0.1.1.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 13.1 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.14.2

File hashes

Hashes for soul_agent-0.1.1.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 cafa1c0844bd123dedddca57fe36ebdd10c07a1f4ae093101b896cd5795afd3f
MD5 605ed8d9ec962be3c5b5faa8da34c08b
BLAKE2b-256 4bac561922da135987094f2c703e9d3a54e578c8dbdf992415a3b3e9c4a12bac

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file soul_agent-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: soul_agent-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 13.0 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/6.2.0 CPython/3.14.2

File hashes

Hashes for soul_agent-0.1.1-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 e00ef1fd31857ed0b3292752fc4d0c231ea33829b7635a5267fb0994e9e1f268
MD5 ffd58f7f377b2a882fac160460e33e4c
BLAKE2b-256 55d7af8623fc1e248eb40e3cbae2370e1884cf015ad81c6ae80494b636158bc4

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Depot Continuous Integration Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page