Memento

Memento — Local Persistent Memory for OpenClaw Agents

Memento gives your agents long-term memory. It captures conversations, extracts structured facts using an LLM, and auto-injects relevant knowledge before each AI turn.

All stored data stays on your machine — no cloud sync, no subscriptions. Extraction uses your configured LLM provider; use a local model (Ollama) for fully air-gapped operation.

⚠️ Privacy note: When autoExtract is enabled, conversation segments are sent to your configured LLM provider for fact extraction. If you use a cloud provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral), that text leaves your machine. For fully local operation, set extractionModel to ollama/<model> and keep Ollama running locally.

What It Does

1. Captures every conversation turn, buffered per session
2. Extracts structured facts (preferences, decisions, people, action items) via configurable LLM (opt-in — see Privacy section)
3. Recalls relevant facts before each AI turn using FTS5 keyword search + optional semantic embeddings (BGE-M3)
4. Respects privacy — facts are classified as shared, private, or secret based on content, with hard overrides for sensitive categories (medical, financial, credentials)
5. Cross-agent knowledge — shared facts flow between agents with provenance tags; private/secret facts never cross boundaries

Quick Start

Install the plugin, restart your gateway, and Memento starts capturing automatically. Extraction is off by default — enable it explicitly when ready.

Optional: Semantic Search

Download a local embedding model for richer recall:

mkdir -p ~/.node-llama-cpp/models
curl -L -o ~/.node-llama-cpp/models/bge-m3-Q8_0.gguf \
  "https://huggingface.co/gpustack/bge-m3-GGUF/resolve/main/bge-m3-Q8_0.gguf"

Environment Variables

All environment variables are optional — you only need the one matching your chosen LLM provider:

No API key needed for ollama/* models (local inference).

Configuration

Add to your openclaw.json under plugins.entries.memento.config:

{
  "memento": {
    "autoCapture": true,
    "extractionModel": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extraction": {
      "autoExtract": true,
      "minTurnsForExtraction": 3
    },
    "recall": {
      "autoRecall": true,
      "maxFacts": 20,
      "crossAgentRecall": true
    }
  }
}

autoExtract: true is an explicit opt-in (default: false). When enabled, conversation segments are sent to the configured extractionModel for LLM-based fact extraction. Omit or set to false to keep everything local.

Data Storage

Memento stores all data locally:

The ~/.engram directory name is a legacy from when the project was called Engram. It will not change to avoid breaking existing installations.

Privacy & Data Flow

Migration (Bootstrap from Existing Memory Files)

To bootstrap Memento from existing agent memory files:

1. Create ~/.engram/migration-config.json or set MEMENTO_WORKSPACE_MAIN:

{
  "agents": [
    {
      "agentId": "main",
      "workspace": "/path/to/your-workspace",
      "paths": ["MEMORY.md", "memory/*.md"]
    }
  ]
}

2. Always dry-run first to verify which files will be read:

npx tsx src/extraction/migrate.ts --all --dry-run

3. Run the actual migration:

npx tsx src/extraction/migrate.ts --all

⚠️ Migration reads files from the workspace paths you specify. Review the config before running.

Architecture

• Capture layer — hooks message:received + message:sent, buffers multi-turn segments
• Extraction layer — async LLM extraction with deduplication, occurrence tracking, and temporal pattern detection
• Storage layer — SQLite (better-sqlite3) with FTS5 full-text search + optional vector embeddings
• Recall layer — multi-factor scoring (recency × frequency × category weight) injected via before_prompt_build hook

Requirements

• OpenClaw 2026.2.20+
• Node.js 18+
• An API key for your preferred LLM provider (for extraction — not needed if extraction is disabled or using Ollama)
• Optional: GPU for accelerated embedding search (falls back to CPU gracefully)

Install

# From ClawHub
clawhub install memento

# Or for local development
git clone https://github.com/braibaud/Memento
cd Memento
npm install

Note: better-sqlite3 includes native bindings that compile during npm install. This is expected behavior for SQLite access.