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Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

alash3al.github.io

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Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#21

Post by tedggh »

A few things seem to work well for me (Codex):

1) An up-to-date detailed functional specification.

2) A codebase structured and organized in multiple projects.

3) Well documented code including good naming conventions; each class, variable or function name should clearly state what its purpose is, no matter how long and silly the name is. These naming conventions are part of a coding guidelines section in Agent.md.

My functional specification acts as the Project.md for the agent.

Then before each agentic code review I create a tree of my project directory and I merged it with the codebase into one single file, and add the timestamp to the file name. This last bit seems to matter to avoid the LLM to refer to older versions and it’s also useful to do quick diffs without sending the agent to git.

So far this simple workflow has been working very well in a fairly large and complex codebase.

Not very efficient tokens wise, but it just works.

By the way I don’t need to merge the entire codebase every time, I may decide to leave projects out because I consider them done and tested or irrelevant to the area I want to be working on.

However I do include them in the printed directory tree so the agent at least knows about them and could request seeing a particular file if it needs to.

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#22

Post by codebolt »

dwb wrote: post #11

I’m certainly on the lookout for something like this and I’m happy to see your account has published software from before the LLM boom as well. I guess I’d like some kind of LLM-use-statement attached to projects: did you use an LLM to generate this, and if so, how much and what stages (design, build, test)? How carefully did you review the output? Do you feel the quality is at least what you could have produced by y…

There are many ways to use an LLM to generate a piece of software. I base most of my projects these days around sets of Markdown files where I use AI first to research, then plan and finally track the progress of implementation (which I do step-wise with the plan, always reviewing as I go along). If I was asked to provide documentation for my workflow those files would be it. My code is 99% generated, but I take care to ensure the LLM generates it in a way that I am happy with. I'd argue the result is often better than what I'd have managed on my own.

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#23

Post by hirako2000 »

chickensong wrote: post #20
dwb wrote: post #11

I’m certainly on the lookout for something like this and I’m happy to see your account has published software from before the LLM boom as well. I guess I’d like some kind of LLM-use-statement attached to projects: did you use an LLM to generate this, and if so, how much and what stages (design, build, test)? How carefully did you review the output? Do you feel the quality is at least what you could have produced by y…

What's the point? You can make good or bad software, with or without LLMs. Do you ask a carpenter if they use a hammer or nail gun? Did they only use the nail gun for the roof and the deck? If you care that much and don't have a foundation of trust, you need to either verify the construction is good, or build it yourself. Anything else is just wishful thinking.

We do ask whether it's handmade or factory.

We even ask when cakes are made in house or frozen even though they look and taste great (at first).

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#24

Post by swingboy »

tedggh wrote: post #21

A few things seem to work well for me (Codex): 1) An up-to-date detailed functional specification. 2) A codebase structured and organized in multiple projects. 3) Well documented code including good naming conventions; each class, variable or function name should clearly state what its purpose is, no matter how long and silly the name is. These naming conventions are part of a coding guidelines section in Agent.md. M…

Interesting approach. How do you do the merging? Is it manual? Just changed files? A hybrid?

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#25

Post by hirako2000 »

_pdp_ wrote: post #6

Well the project is promising something without providing any details how exactly this is achieved which to me is always a huge red flag. Digging deeper I can see it is effectively pg_vector plus mcp with two functions: "recall" and "remember". It is effectively a RAG. You can make the argument that perhaps the data structure matters but all of these "memory" systems effectively do the same and none of them have so f…

It's a cool website..it says memory. It shows LLM suck and this product magically just works.

In a way, if it does accomplish that, it is a vectordb needing glorification.

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#26

Post by hirako2000 »

jvwww wrote: post #16
Incipient wrote: post #12

I still haven't found useful "memory". It's either an agents.md with a high level summary, which is fairly useless for specific details (eg "editing this element needs to mark this other element as a draft") or something detailed and explaining the nitty gritty, which seems to give too much detail such that it gets ignored, or detail from one functional area contaminates the intended changes in another functional are…

Yeah I feel the same way. Wonder when/if we'll get continual learning from these models. I feel like they are smart enough already but their lack of real memory makes them a pain to deal with.

Google Gemini does this sort of thing. External to the model k presume. And it's very annoying.

A friend told me he would like Claude to remember his personality, which is exactly what Gemini is trying to do.

A machine pretending to be human is disturbing enough. A machine pretending to understand you will spiral very far into spitting out exactly what we want to read.

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#28

Post by jFriedensreich »

All these agent memory systems seem so simultaneously over and under engineered and like a certain dead end. I cannot imagine any reality in which this does not rot and get out of sync with what the latest model need. For the one time you build a payment provider how many session will be tilted towards thinking about payments because of the "don't use stripe" memory?

Re: Open source memory layer so any AI agent can do what Claude.ai and ChatGPT do

#30

Post by aprilnya »

I clicked this thinking “oh, cool, someone finally made a portable version of the Claude.ai* memory system!” Spoiler, no, it’s not it at all, it’s just a “store”/“remember” memory system… as opposed to the Claude.ai memory system, where it doesn’t make the model actively have to write memories on its own, but rather has a model in the background go through your chat history and generate a summary from it.

I’ve found the latter approach to work much, much better than simple “store”/“remember” systems.

So, it just feels misleading to say this can do what Claude.ai’s can do…

(I’ve been looking for a memory system that works the same for a while, so that I can switch away from Claude.ai to something else like LibreChat, but I just haven’t found any. Might be the only thing keeping me on Claude at this point.)

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*I say Claude.ai because that’s specifically what has the system; Claude Code doesn’t have this system

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