Hippocampus

Your agents forget between sessions. This fixes that.

Every time an OpenClaw agent starts a new session, it wakes up blank. No memory of yesterday's conversations, open threads, or promises made. You've seen it: the same questions re-asked, context re-explained, commitments quietly dropped.

Hippocampus gives your agents a rolling briefing that's automatically injected into every session. No tool calls, no manual loading — your agent just knows.

openclaw plugins install hippocampus

Before and After

Without Hippocampus:

"What were we working on?" "Can you remind me of the status?" "I don't have context on that conversation..."

With Hippocampus:

Your agent opens every session already briefed — what's top of mind, what threads are open, what commitments are outstanding, and what happened in recent sessions.

How It Works

Three memory layers, working together:

Daily Notes           HIPPOCAMPUS.md          MEMORY.md
(raw session logs) -> (14-day rolling       -> (permanent curated
                       synthesis, auto-        knowledge, graduated
                       injected every          when patterns prove
                       session)                durable)

1. Daily notes — memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md files your agents already write
2. HIPPOCAMPUS.md — A daily cron synthesizes your agent's recent notes into a rolling briefing. Automatically loaded into every session via prependSystemContext.
3. MEMORY.md — When a pattern persists across multiple cycles, promote it to permanent memory with the hippocampus_graduate tool.

The synthesis is the key part. It doesn't dump raw logs — it synthesizes. The output reads like an ops briefing: what's hot, what's stuck, what's owed, what just happened.

Quick Start

1. Install

openclaw plugins install hippocampus

Zero config required for single-agent setups. The plugin activates immediately:

• HIPPOCAMPUS.md injected into every session
• Setup and graduation tools registered
• The hippocampus-sync companion skill available for cron

2. Set up the daily synthesis

Ask your agent:

"Set up hippocampus for me"

The setup wizard scans your workspace, shows you what the synthesis will cover, and generates configuration. Works via Telegram, Slack, or any channel.

Or via CLI:

openclaw hippocampus setup

Or add the cron job directly:

openclaw cron add \
  --agent main \
  --schedule "0 4 * * *" \
  --name "hippocampus-sync" \
  --prompt "Run the hippocampus-sync skill"

3. Done

Your agent now wakes up every session with full rolling context.

What Gets Synthesized

The daily synthesis produces these sections:

| Section | What it captures | |---------|-----------------| | Top of Mind | 3-5 highest-priority items, rewritten every sync | | Open Threads | Active work streams, persists until resolved | | Commitments | Who owes what to whom, with staleness flags | | Recent Sessions | Rolling conversation log from the last 14 days |

You can add custom sections per agent (e.g., cron_health for a platform engineer, pipeline_status for a sales agent).

Multi-Agent Setup

Running multiple agents? Configure each one's synthesis independently:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "hippocampus": {
        "config": {
          "agents": {
            "cyclawps": {
              "domainFraming": "Platform-centric. Lead with system health and infrastructure state.",
              "sources": [
                {
                  "id": "health",
                  "path": "artifacts/reports/health-check/",
                  "label": "Health reports",
                  "whatToExtract": "System state, uptime, errors",
                  "windowed": true
                }
              ],
              "outputSections": ["top_of_mind", "open_threads", "commitments", "recent_sessions", "cron_health"]
            },
            "bobo": {
              "domainFraming": "Strategy-focused. Lead with pipeline health, client relationships, and decisions pending.",
              "sources": [
                { "id": "charter", "path": "CHARTER.md", "label": "Strategic charter", "whatToExtract": "Current priorities and goal progress", "windowed": false }
              ]
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Agent sources are additive — memory/ is always included. Additional sources are appended alongside it.

Each agent gets a hippocampus-sync.config.md companion file in their workspace — human-readable, directly editable — controlling domain framing, source tables, and output sections.

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "hippocampus": {
        "config": {
          "enabled": true,
          "rollingWindowDays": 14,
          "targetSizeChars": { "min": 3000, "max": 5000 },
          "contextInjection": {
            "enabled": true,
            "priority": 50,
            "excludeAgents": []
          },
          "synthesis": {
            "outputSections": ["top_of_mind", "open_threads", "commitments", "recent_sessions"],
            "domainFraming": "General-purpose working memory"
          },
          "graduation": {
            "enabled": true,
            "persistenceDaysThreshold": 14,
            "autoSuggest": true,
            "maxMemorySizeChars": 15000
          },
          "agents": {}
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

| Setting | Default | Description | |---------|---------|-------------| | rollingWindowDays | 14 | Days of history the synthesis considers | | targetSizeChars | 3000-5000 | Size budget for HIPPOCAMPUS.md | | contextInjection.priority | 50 | Higher = earlier in context window | | contextInjection.excludeAgents | [] | Agent IDs to skip injection for | | graduation.persistenceDaysThreshold | 14 | Days a pattern must persist before suggesting graduation | | graduation.maxMemorySizeChars | 15000 | Size guard for MEMORY.md |

Agent Tools

| Tool | What it does | |------|-------------| | hippocampus_setup | Scans your workspace, previews what the synthesis will produce, and generates configuration. Works conversationally — just tell your agent "set up hippocampus." | | hippocampus_graduate | Promotes a durable learning from the rolling synthesis to permanent MEMORY.md. Deduplicates automatically. |

Coexistence

Hippocampus works alongside other OpenClaw plugins without conflict:

• lossless-claw — Hippocampus is not a context engine. It uses before_prompt_build hooks, which lossless-claw respects during context assembly.
• memory-core — Hippocampus writes standard markdown files. memory-core indexes them automatically.
• Any plugin — No conflicts. Reads and writes markdown in agent workspaces only.

Development

git clone https://github.com/comicsansbestfont/hippocampus.git
cd hippocampus && npm install
npm test              # 47 tests
npx tsc --noEmit      # type check

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for the contributor guide and docs/TESTING.md for end-to-end testing with a dev OpenClaw instance.

Background

Built by Sachee Perera. Battle-tested on a 13-agent, 4-business-unit OpenClaw instance running in production.

The three-layer memory pattern emerged from running autonomous agents across GTM advisory, e-commerce, content, and platform engineering — where dropped context means dropped revenue.

License

MIT