hippocampus

🧠 Hippocampus

A living memory system for OpenClaw agents with importance scoring, time-based decay, and reinforcement—just like a real brain.

The Concept

The hippocampus runs in the background, just like the real organ in your brain.

Your main agent is busy having conversations—it can't constantly stop to decide what to remember. That's what the hippocampus does. It operates as a separate process:

1. Background encoding: A cron job or separate agent watches conversations and encodes important signals into memory
2. Automatic decay: Unused memories fade over time (daily cron)
3. Reinforcement on recall: When memories are accessed, they strengthen automatically

The main agent doesn't "think about" memory—it just recalls what it needs, and the hippocampus handles the rest. Like a real brain.

Features

• Importance Scoring: Memories rated 0.0-1.0 based on signal type
• Time-Based Decay: Unused memories fade (0.99^days)
• Reinforcement: Used memories strengthen (+15% headroom)
• Background Processing: Encoding runs via cron, not in main agent's context
• OpenClaw Integration: Bridges with memory_search via HIPPOCAMPUS_CORE.md

Installation

cd ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/hippocampus
./install.sh --with-cron

Or via ClawdHub:

clawdhub install hippocampus

Quick Usage

# Load core memories at session start
./scripts/load-core.sh

# Search with importance weighting
./scripts/recall.sh "project deadline" --reinforce

# Manually boost a memory
./scripts/reinforce.sh mem_001 --boost

# Apply decay (usually via cron)
./scripts/decay.sh

How It Works

┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐
│   Capture   │────▶│   Score &   │────▶│   Store in  │
│  (encoding) │     │   Classify  │     │  index.json │
└─────────────┘     └─────────────┘     └──────┬──────┘
                                               │
                    ┌──────────────────────────┘
                    │
                    ▼
┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐     ┌─────────────┐
│    Decay    │◀───▶│   Retrieve  │────▶│  Reinforce  │
│ (0.99^days) │     │  (recall.sh)│     │   on use    │
└─────────────┘     └─────────────┘     └─────────────┘

Memory Domains

Domain	Contents
user/	Facts about the human
self/	Agent identity & growth
relationship/	Shared context & trust
world/	External knowledge

Decay Timeline

Days Unused	Retention
7	93%
30	74%
90	40%

Requirements

• Python 3
• jq
• OpenClaw

Based On

Stanford Generative Agents: "Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior" (Park et al., 2023)

License

MIT

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Memory is identity. Text > Brain.