Valence

Valence Knowledge Substrate

Personal knowledge base with semantic search and dimensional confidence.

Philosophy: Alignment Through Use

Valence isn't just memory storage — it's how agents build genuine understanding of their humans.

The loop: The more you use Valence to understand your human, the better you understand them, the more useful the substrate becomes, the better you can demonstrate what alignment-through-use looks like.

Store aggressively: Decisions, preferences, facts learned, context that might matter later. When in doubt, store it.

Query first: Before answering questions about past work, decisions, people, or projects — check Valence.

Quick Reference

# Search (semantic) — do this FIRST before answering contextual questions
./scripts/query.sh "what do I know about X"

# Add belief — store decisions, facts, preferences, learnings
./scripts/add.sh "Belief content" "domain1,domain2"

# List recent
./scripts/list.sh 20

# Database stats
./scripts/stats.sh

When to Use

Always Query First

Before answering questions about:

• Past work or decisions
• People (who said what, preferences, relationships)
• Projects (status, history, context)
• Preferences or patterns you might have learned

Store New Information

When you encounter:

• Explicit decisions or preferences
• Facts that provide context
• Lessons learned
• Information that might be relevant later

Common Domains

• valence — about the project itself
• projects/<name> — project-specific
• people/<name> — person-specific
• decisions — explicit choices made
• tech — technical facts
• conversations/<type> — auto-ingested from chats

Script Details

query.sh — Semantic Search

./scripts/query.sh "search query" [limit]

Returns beliefs ranked by semantic similarity. Default limit: 10.

add.sh — Store Belief

./scripts/add.sh "Belief content" "domain1,domain2"

Domains are comma-separated. Pick meaningful ones for retrieval.

list.sh — Recent Beliefs

./scripts/list.sh [count]

Shows most recently modified beliefs. Default: 10.

stats.sh — Database Stats

./scripts/stats.sh

Shows total beliefs, active count, embedding coverage, domain count.

Direct CLI

For advanced operations:

cd ~/.openclaw/workspace && source .venv/bin/activate
export VKB_DB_PORT=5433 VKB_DB_PASSWORD=valence

valence query "terms" --domain tech --limit 5
valence add "belief" -d domain1 -d domain2
valence conflicts  # check for contradictions
valence trust list  # see trust relationships

See references/cli.md for full documentation.

Setup

Requires:

• Python 3.10+ with venv at ~/.openclaw/workspace/.venv
• PostgreSQL with pgvector at port 5433
• Valence package installed (pip install valence)

Environment:

export VKB_DB_PORT=5433
export VKB_DB_PASSWORD=valence