a-memory

Your AI agents forget. a-memory makes them remember. 4-tier agent memory with hybrid search and a real knowledge graph — all in plain SQLite files. Zero cloud. Zero external APIs.

Also available on PyPI: pip install a-memory — optional extras: a-memory[embeddings] for real multilingual embeddings.

Why SQLite?

Every other memory server sends your agent's data through a cloud API or requires a separate vector database.

a-memory stores everything in SQLite files on your machine.

• Zero infrastructure. No Docker, no database server, no embedding API keys.
• Zero data leaving your network. Works air-gapped.
• Layer-isolated by design. User facts and agent identity never share a namespace.
• One directory = entire memory. Back up with cp, sync with rsync.

Why this exists

Three problems a-memory solves:

① Agent self-evolution — your AI stops repeating mistakes between sessions. It remembers decisions, errors, and corrections in a dedicated agent layer, and an hourly consolidation sweep promotes what matters into long-term facts.

② User persona persistence — your agent knows who it's talking to even after weeks of silence. Preferences, history, emotional context live in the user layer, isolated from agent identity.

③ Project continuity — project tracks per-project context: decisions with rationale and outcomes, artifact maps, a graphify-powered code index — so a fresh session picks up where the last one left off.

Get started

pip install a-memory
a-memory          # MCP server on stdio — connect from any MCP client

Point your MCP client at it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "a-memory": {
      "command": "a-memory"
    }
  }
}

HTTP transport with dashboard:

a-memory --transport http --port 8000 --dashboard

Or run from source:

git clone https://github.com/Cipher208/a-memory.git
cd a-memory
uv sync
uv run ariel-memory

The five primitives

Agents see exactly six tools — one verb per intent (5 verbs + memory_hook), no tool-choice paralysis:

Quick demo — Python MCP client:

# think — routed to the right store automatically
await session.call_tool("think", {"text": "User prefers dark mode", "layer": "user"})

# dream — finds it across every store, a week later
res = await session.call_tool("dream", {"query": "dark mode preference"})
print(res["summary"])

65 fine-grained operations exist in total, grouped into coherent opt-in tiers: the 6 primitives are exposed by default; add context (recall protocol, /new session recap, smart context budget, steering hints, tool-output compression), insight (Memory Query DSL, provenance fact-blame, quality loop, reflections, stats), write (typed memory schemas, declarative rules engine, scratchpad, counterfactuals, episodes), plus wiki, brief, and review (staged mutations) — e.g. ARIEL_EXPOSE=primitives,context,insight,write,wiki,brief,review (57 tools; the remaining 8 are admin-tier, exposed only via ARIEL_EXPOSE=all).

⚠️ Env sanitization gotcha (stdio): MCP clients pass a sanitized environment to stdio servers — setting ARIEL_EXPOSE in your shell profile does nothing. Define the tier set in your MCP client config (the env block of the server entry — see configuration guide). The server logs its resolved surface at startup (tool exposure: N/M tools) — if your agent reports seeing only the primitives, check that line first, then restart the client session (tool lists are cached per session).

Features

Architecture

graph TD
    A[LLM Agent] -->|MCP Protocol| B[mcp_server]
    B --> C{Importance Scoring}
    C --> D[L1: ReflexBuffer]
    D --> E[L2: SessionStore]
    E --> F{EmotionTrigger?}
    F -->|high emotion| G[L3: EpisodicMemory]
    F -->|normal| H[L4: CoreMemory]

    B --> I[RAG Engine]
    I --> J[FTS5 Search]
    I --> K[MIB Binary Search]
    I --> L[Hybrid RRF Ranking]

    B --> M[Wiki System]
    M --> N[.md Files]
    M --> O[SQLite Index]

    B --> P[Knowledge Graphs]
    P --> Q[Epistemic Graph]
    P --> R[Temporal Graph]

    B --> S[Project Store]
    S --> T[Decisions / Artifacts / Code Index]

    U[Hourly Sweep] -->|consolidate| G
    U -->|promote| H
    U -->|auto-VACUUM| V[(SQLite)]

Comparison