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Show HN: AI memory with biological decay (52% recall)

https://github.com/sachitrafa/YourMemory
27•SachitRafa•1h ago
Most RAG setups fail because they treat memory like a static filing cabinet. When every transient bug fix or abandoned rule is stored forever, the context window eventually chokes on noise, spiking token costs and degrading the agent's reasoning.

This implementation experiments with a biological approach by using the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve to manage context as a living substrate. Memories are assigned a "strength" score where each recall reinforces the data and flattens its decay curve (spaced repetition), while unused data eventually hits a threshold and is pruned.

To solve the "logical neighbor" problem where semantic search misses relevant but non-similar nodes, a graph layer is layered over the vector store. Benchmarked against the LoCoMo dataset, this reached 52% Recall@5, nearly double the accuracy of stateless vector stores, while cutting token waste by roughly 84%.

Built as a local first MCP server using DuckDB, the hypothesis is that for agents handling long-running projects, "what to forget" is just as critical as "what to remember." I'd be interested to hear if others are exploring non-linear decay or similar biological constraints for context management.

GitHub: https://github.com/sachitrafa/cognitive-ai-memory

Comments

larrydakhissi•1h ago
you just make Alzheimer a feature lol , but seriously this is very interesting
keeda•1h ago
Missed opportunity to call it AIzheimer? ;-)
altmanaltman•1h ago
I am sorry but the whole "biological memory" thing seems like marketing fluff on basic cache mechanisms.

You said it cuts token usage by 84% but isn't that typical for any typical chunked RAG system?

And why did you specifically chose to test against the LoMoCo dataset when there's a lot of issues with it and it being very easy to cheat?

jnovek•1h ago
I think it’s reasonable, a forgetting curve is intended to models a biological process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

xhevahir•1h ago
And a neural network is really just a composed, non-linear parameterized function that maps input vectors to output vectors. Sometimes metaphors or analogies do contribute something valuable.
throawayonthe•9m ago
isn't that an example of an analogy being more misleading than useful
tra3•52m ago
I haven’t had much like with memory implementations. I tried a few.

What I do now is preserve all my claude code conversations and set the context from there.

This allows me to curate memory and it’s been the best way so far.

cyanydeez•41m ago
on the other "biological memory" post in so many weeks, I pointed out that the decay rate shouldn't be based on a real clock but a lifetime of it's use within the coding session. Elsewise your memory fades even when there's no process change (eg, coder goes on vacation). I'm not going to check whether thats true here, but it seems like a naive first assumption thats failed conceptualization.

The other comment is that spatial memory is probably a better trigger for memory, so if you're not tracking where the coding session starts, the folders it's visits, etc, then you're not really providing a good associative footpath for the assistant to retrieve whats important for any given project.

SwellJoe•17m ago
I know everybody seems to want the agent to remember every conversation they've ever had with it, but I just don't see the value in that. In fact, it seems to hurt productivity to have the agent second guessing me based on something I said yesterday. Every time I've used any memory system, the agent gets distracted from the current tasks based on previous conversations and branches of development...often comingling unrelated projects (I work on code for work, open source projects, a bunch of unrelated side projects, etc.) and trying to satisfy requirements that don't make sense.

I've stopped trying to achieve general "memory". I just ask the agent to thoroughly, but concisely, document each project. If it writes developer documentation and a development plan/roadmap, as though a person was going to have to get up to speed and start working on the project, it provides all the information the agent needs tomorrow or next week to pick up where we left off.

The agent is not my friend. I don't need it to remember my birthday or the nasty thing I said about React last week. I need it to document what anyone, agent or human, would need to know to get productive in a particular repo, with no previous knowledge of the project.

Good, concise, developer and user documentation and a plan with checklists solves every problem people seem to think "memory" will solve: It tells the agent what tech stack to use (we hashed it out in planning), it tells it what commands it needs to run and test the app, it covers the static analysis tools in use (which formalizes code style, etc. in a way a vague comment I made a month ago cannot), and it is cheap. Markdown files are the native tongue of agents. No MCP, no skills, no API needed. Just read the file. It works for any agent, any model, and any human just getting started with the project.

Basically, I think memory makes agents dumber and less useful. I want it to focus on the task at hand.

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https://github.com/sachitrafa/YourMemory
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