<p align="center">
<img src="logo.png" alt="taOSmd" width="300">
</p>
# taOSmd
**Framework-agnostic AI memory system. Provable, auditable memory. 97.0% Recall@5 on LongMemEval-S.**
Provable Memory: a zero-loss archive that is never overwritten, plus a verifier that checks every extracted fact against its source and leaves out what it can't support.
Most memory systems pull facts out of your conversations and throw the source away. So when a fact is wrong, nothing flags it, and when it gets overwritten, the old version is gone without a trace. taOSmd works the other way around. Everything lands first in an append-only archive that is never edited or deleted, and the memory you search is derived from that archive, never written over it. Because the source stays, taOSmd checks each extracted fact against the exact text it came from, tells you the share it cannot support, and keeps the unsupported ones out of recall. On our own data that unsupported-fact rate was 18.8 percent, a number systems that discard the source cannot even measure.
Recall@5 means the correct evidence session lands in the top-5 retrieved, the same retrieval metric MemPalace (96.6%) and agentmemory (95.2%) publish, measured the same way for a like-for-like comparison. The stricter end-to-end Judge measurement (retrieve, generate, then grade the answer against the reference with an LLM) is a separate, lower number. An earlier 74.6% figure for it was inflated by a verdict-scoring bug (the judge parser counted INCORRECT verdicts as passes), found and fixed on 2026-06-23 (PR #176); corrected, the end-to-end Judge is in the 43 to 51 percent range on the shipped config (judge-dependent), and the shipped `factual-recall` generator profile (granite4.1:8b at the 12 and 8 GB tiers) lifts it to 54.8 / 60.4, parity with MemOS-lossless (54.0 / 61.2), see [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md#end-to-end-judge-on-longmemeval-s-the-generation-side-number) and the research report (N-017, F-016). It is a separate, stricter metric and is never conflated with the Recall@5 retrieval number. Runs offline on anything with 8 GB+ RAM and Python 3.10+: a Pi 4B, an old laptop, an Intel mini PC, a Mac mini, or a 16 GB Orange Pi 5 Plus (our reference low-end). Zero cloud dependencies. Part of the [taOS](https://github.com/jaylfc/tinyagentos) ecosystem. Methodology and comparison notes in [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md).
---
## Why this exists
Most memory benchmarks run on hosted models (GPT-4o-mini, Claude, Gemini) behind an API key, fine for prototypes, not fine if you're:
- **On modest hardware.** Running an agent on a Pi 4B, a £170 Orange Pi 5 Plus, an Intel mini PC, an old laptop, or a Mac mini. No 24 GB 4090. 8 GB RAM minimum, 16 GB comfortable, NPU or GPU optional. The memory system has to fit *around* that, not on top of it.
- **Distributed across a few small machines.** Pi + desktop + laptop, pooled by the taOS stack. The memory layer lives across those nodes without assuming any single "real" machine.
- **Offline or air-gapped.** Forwarding a conversation turn to a third-party API is a compliance violation or a signal flare. Memory here can't mean "we shipped it to a hosted API".
- **Zero-loss by default.** The verbatim transcript goes into an append-only archive first; summaries and structure are layered on top, never *over*. The source is still on the shelf byte-for-byte. Disagree with a summary? Read what was actually said.
The 97.0% on LongMemEval-S was measured on our reference low-end stack (Orange Pi 5 Plus, 16 GB RAM). The same code runs on a Pi 4B, an Intel mini PC, a Mac mini, an old laptop, or a workstation with a GPU, see [Hardware Tested](#hardware-tested). No hidden hosted model doing the heavy lifting off-camera.
Zero cloud dependencies. Zero API keys. NPU if you have one, CPU if you don't, cluster if you want the throughput.
---
## Getting Started
### Let your agent install it
**Recommended: let an agent set it up for your machine.** Run `taosmd setup-prompt`
to print an install prompt already tailored to your detected hardware, then paste
it into a tool-capable agent (Claude Code, Cowork, or similar). It picks the right
model for your silicon, recommends a feature profile, and asks before enabling
anything that changes latency or behaviour. If you have not cloned the repo yet,
use the static prompt in [docs/INSTALL-AGENT-PROMPT.md](docs/INSTALL-AGENT-PROMPT.md).
The manual steps below still work for anyone who prefers them.
The cleanest way to install taOSmd is to ask your agent to do it. Paste this message into Claude Code, Cursor, your OpenClaw shell, whatever:
> Please install taOSmd as my memory system. The repo is github.com/jaylfc/taosmd.
>
> 1. Read the README so you understand what you're installing.
> 2. Run the install script: `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jaylfc/taosmd/master/scripts/setup.sh | bash`. Report any errors and stop if it fails.
> 3. Register yourself as an agent so you have your own isolated index. Pick a stable agent name (lowercase, no spaces), the same name you'll use every time you call the librarian. If I have multiple agents in this framework, ask me what to name this one before registering.
> 4. Verify the install: call `taosmd.search("hello", agent="<your-name>")`, it should return an empty result, not an error.
> 5. Append the "Memory, taOSmd" rules block to my agent file (CLAUDE.md / system prompt / AGENTS.md, whatever your framework reads every turn). Pull the block via `python -c "import taosmd; print(taosmd.agent_rules())"`, the file is shipped as package data at `taosmd/docs/agent-rules.md` so this works from both editable and wheel installs. Replace `<your-agent-name>` with the name you registered as.
> 6. Confirm it's installed and tell me your agent name so I know how to refer to your memory.
>
> Don't summarise the repo or paraphrase the rules. Copy them verbatim, the wording is the contract.
The agent will pull the repo, run the install, register itself, append the per-turn rules block to its own instruction file, and verify everything works. After that, every turn it runs it'll check the librarian when it's uncertain, see [taosmd/docs/agent-rules.md](taosmd/docs/agent-rules.md) for the rules block it installs (also available via `taosmd.agent_rules()`).
**Multiple agents in one framework?** Same install message works. The agent will ask you to name it before registering, so each agent gets its own shelf. The taOSmd service stays one process with one shared set of stores; per-agent isolation is enforced by an `agent` tag on every row, not by separate files. See [docs/multi-agent.md](docs/multi-agent.md) for the full naming convention, project-scoped and cross-agent memory, migration scenarios, and a five-agent worked example.
**Inside taOS?** Don't use this. taOS provisions taOSmd automatically when you deploy an agent, and the rules block is baked into the agent template. This install path is for standalone framework users.
### One-Line Setup (manual)
> **Install:** `pip install taosmd` (add the MCP server with `pip install "taosmd[mcp]"`). For a source install instead, `git clone` then `pip install -e .`. Warning: `pip install -e .` installs the runtime only and gives you no test runner. The failure is silent, so a reader will otherwise assume their setup worked. See the Dev setup section below for the working commands. The one-line bootstrap below additionally installs Ollama and downloads the embedding and LLM models; it is newer and still being validated across clean machines, so please report issues.
```bash
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jaylfc/taosmd/master/scripts/setup.sh | bash
```
This will:
1. Clone the repo and install Python dependencies
2. Download the embedding models: all-MiniLM-L6-v2 ONNX (90MB) and snowflake-arctic-embed-s ONNX (~130MB, the shipped dense default)
3. Install Ollama and pull Qwen3-4B for fact extraction + answering (2.6GB)
4. On RK3588: download the NPU-optimised Qwen3-4B RKLLM model instead (4.6GB)
5. Create the data directory and run a self-test
### Manual Install
```bash
git clone https://github.com/jaylfc/taosmd.git
cd taosmd
# Runtime only -- pip install -e . gives you no test runner
pip install -e .
# 1. Embedding model (required)
hf download onnx-models/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-onnx --local-dir models/minilm-onnx
# 2. LLM for fact extraction + answering (required)
# Option A (default): any Linux/macOS box with or without a GPU, use Ollama
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
ollama pull qwen3:4b
# Option B (NPU acceleration): Orange Pi / Rock 5 / Radxa with RK3588, use rkllama
# Install rkllama: https://github.com/NotPunchnox/rkllama
hf download dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base \
Qwen3-4B-rk3588-w8a8-opt-1-hybrid-ratio-0.0.rkllm \
--local-dir ~/.rkllama/models/qwen3-4b-chat
```
### Dev setup
```bash
git clone https://github.com/jaylfc/taosmd.git
cd taosmd
# Install the package plus test dependencies
uv sync
# Verify the environment
uv run python -c "import pytest, jwt, cryptography"
# Run the test suite
uv run pytest
```
`pip` is not documented as a working dev-setup path: `pip install -e .`
installs the runtime only and does not read the PEP 735 `[dependency-groups]`
dev group where the test dependencies live. `uv sync` is the supported short
path.
### Install hygiene (avoid a shadowed install)
Always install taOSmd into a virtual environment, and never with `sudo` into the
system Python. A system-wide copy under `/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/taosmd`
(left by an earlier `sudo pip install`) will shadow a venv editable install, so
`import taosmd` resolves to the stale system copy instead of your checkout. To
check what is actually being imported and remove a stale system copy:
```bash
# Which taosmd is active, and its version?
python -c "import taosmd, pathlib; print(pathlib.Path(taosmd.__file__).resolve()); print(taosmd.__version__)"
# If it points at /usr/lib/... or /usr/local/... instead of your venv, remove it:
sudo python3 -m pip uninstall -y taosmd # the SYSTEM python, outside any venv
```
Running `taosmd serve` as a systemd unit? Point the unit at your venv's
interpreter (`ExecStart=/path/to/.venv/bin/python -m taosmd serve ...`); a PyPI
or venv install needs no `WorkingDirectory` and no repo checkout to start.
### Tell Your Agent
If you're using Claude Code, OpenClaw, Cursor, or any AI coding agent, paste this into your conversation or CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md:
> **Set up taOSmd as my persistent memory system.**
>
> 1. Clone https://github.com/jaylfc/taosmd and run `scripts/setup.sh`, it installs everything (embedding model, Qwen3-4B LLM, data stores, daily archive compression cron).
>
> 2. After setup, integrate taOSmd into your workflow:
>
> **Store facts you learn about me:**
> ```python
> import os
> from taosmd import KnowledgeGraph
> kg = KnowledgeGraph(os.path.expanduser("~/.taosmd/knowledge-graph.db"))
> await kg.init()
> await kg.add_triple("User", "prefers", "local models")
> ```
>
> **Archive every conversation turn (zero-loss: never summarise, never delete):**
> ```python
> from taosmd import Archive
> archive = Archive(archive_dir=os.path.expanduser("~/.taosmd/archive"), index_path=os.path.expanduser("~/.taosmd/archive-index.db"))
> await archive.init()
> await archive.record("conversation", {"role": "user", "content": message}, summary=message[:80])
> ```
>
> **Search my history when I ask about something:**
> ```python
> from taosmd import VectorMemory
> vmem = VectorMemory(os.path.expanduser("~/.taosmd/vector-memory.db"), embed_mode="onnx", onnx_path="<taosmd-dir>/models/minilm-onnx")
> await vmem.init()
> # fusion="mem0_additive" is a strong CPU-friendly fusion; MaxSim+rerank (bge-v2-m3) leads on a GPU box. See docs/benchmarks.md.
> # Falls back to hybrid keyword+vector if `hybrid=False`.
> results = await vmem.search("What did I say about Docker?", hybrid=True, fusion="mem0_additive")
> ```
>
> **Extract facts automatically from our conversations:**
> ```python
> from taosmd.memory_extractor import process_conversation_turn
> await process_conversation_turn(message, agent_name="assistant", kg=kg, archive=archive)
> ```
>
> **Before answering, check what you know about me:**
> ```python
> facts = await kg.query_entity("User")
> history = await archive.search_fts("relevant topic")
> similar = await vmem.search("the question", hybrid=True, fusion="mem0_additive")
> ```
>
> The archive is append-only and kept forever. Every conversation, tool call, decision, and error should be recorded. Old archives are compressed to gzip daily at 3 AM. The knowledge graph tracks structured facts with temporal validity, update facts when they change, don't delete them.
>
> **Production leader recipe** for LoCoMo-class workloads: `qwen3.5:9b` generator + `--retrieval-top-k 20 --adjacent-turns 2 --llm-query-expansion --fusion mem0_additive --gen-temp 0.2`. Reproduces 0.68 Overall / 0.55 Single-hop on full 1540 QAs under `gemma4:e2b` judge, see [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md#locomo--multi-session-conversational-memory-1540-qas). All flags available on master as of PR #69.
---
## Benchmark Results
**97.0% Recall@5 on LongMemEval-S** (500 questions, standard test set). Recall@5 is a retrieval metric: did the correct evidence session land in the top-5 retrieved. Harness: `benchmarks/longmemeval_recall.py`. This is the same metric MemPalace (96.6%) and agentmemory (95.2%) publish, so it is a like-for-like comparison. The end-to-end Judge number (retrieve, generate, grade the answer) is reported separately and is a lower, stricter metric; an earlier 74.6% figure was inflated by a judge-parser bug, fixed 2026-06-23 (PR #176), and the corrected range is 43 to 51 percent on the shipped config; the shipped `factual-recall` generator profile (granite4.1:8b at 12/8 GB) reaches 54.8 / 60.4, parity with MemOS-lossless. See [End-to-end Judge](docs/benchmarks.md#end-to-end-judge-on-longmemeval-s-the-generation-side-number).
> These are our own reproducible measurements, not a third-party-audited landscape ranking. Every number pins its metric, models, dataset, and commit so you can re-run it on your own hardware. The LongMemEval-S 97.0% above is Recall@5 (retrieval only, no generation or grading step). The LoCoMo numbers below are judged end-to-end, and there we deliberately report under a strict local judge (`qwen3:4b`) alongside the lenient frontier-judge number other systems publish, so the comparison is honest about what is being measured. See the [judge-sensitivity analysis](docs/benchmarks.md#judge-sensitivity--what-we-are-really-measuring).
See [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md) for the full LongMemEval-S breakdown, the LoCoMo (1540-QA multi-session) measurements with retrieval-architecture ablations, methodology, and per-hardware-tier configuration recommendations (12 / 8 / 4 GB GPU, Orange Pi NPU, RPi 4). The full living research report, methodology and negative results included, lives in [docs/research-report.md](docs/research-report.md).
### Per-Category Breakdown
| Category | hybrid + expand | raw semantic |
|----------|----------------|--------------|
| knowledge-update | **100.0%** (78/78) | 100.0% |
| multi-session | **98.5%** (131/133) | 95.5% |
| single-session-user | **97.1%** (68/70) | 90.0% |
| single-session-assistant | **96.4%** (54/56) | 96.4% |
| temporal-reasoning | **95.5%** (127/133) | 94.0% |
| single-session-preference | 90.0% (27/30) | 93.3% |
| **Overall** | **97.0%** (485/500) | 95.0% (475/500) |
### Fusion Strategy Comparison
| Strategy | Recall@5 | Delta |
|----------|---------------|-------|
| Raw cosine (same algorithm as MemPalace) | 95.0% | baseline |
| Additive keyword boost | 96.6% | +1.6 |
| **Hybrid + query expansion (the 97.0% headline recipe)** | **97.0%** | **+2.0** |
| All-turns hybrid (harder test) | 93.2% | -1.8 |
### Librarian Layer, Vocabulary-Gap Benchmark
The Librarian adds LLM-assisted query expansion on top of the vector + cross-encoder stack. We measure its effect with a purpose-built three-axis harness on long-horizon sessions (60 turns, fact buried at turn 5).
**Axis C, vocabulary-gap coherence** (2026-04-15, gemma4:e2b 5B, Fedora host):
| Config | Composite | recall@lag25 | recall@lag50 |
|--------|-----------|-------------|-------------|
| Vector-only | 0.752 | 30% | 30% |
| Full pipeline (+ cross-encoder) | 0.752 | 30% | 30% |
| **Full + Librarian** | **0.810** | **45%** | **55%** |
**+15.4% on the vocabulary-gap axis.** The cross-encoder alone adds nothing when the target fact is excluded from its candidate pool, only the Librarian's expansion bridges category→specific-name gaps (e.g. query: *"code editor"*, fact: *"Neovim lua config done"*). These are preliminary results on one class of retrieval failure; we're actively working on tougher benchmarks to stress-test staleness detection and multi-store routing before drawing composite conclusions.
### LoCoMo, same-tier leader on a 12 GB GPU
LoCoMo-10 is a harder dataset than LongMemEval-S: 1540 QAs across multi-session conversations (50+ sessions, 400 to 700 turns), four categories, more pressure on the retrieval architecture. We run it on the smaller generators we actually target so the numbers reflect the hardware tier our users run on, not gpt-4o-mini.
**MaxSim + reranking is the current leader on the full 1540-QA test set, first across all three of our judges.** It runs a `bge-v2-m3` cross-encoder doing late-interaction (MaxSim) scoring over a wider k=50 candidate pool:
| Recipe (qwen3.5:9b, full 1540) | Lenient `gemma4:e2b` | Strict `llama3.1:8b` | Strict `qwen3:4b-instruct` |
|---|---|---|---|
| **MaxSim + rerank** (`--retrieval-top-k 50 --adjacent-turns 2 --reranker bge-v2-m3 --fusion mem0_additive`) | **0.748** | **0.394** | **0.659** |
| RRF (`--retrieval-top-k 20 --adjacent-turns 2 --llm-query-expansion --fusion rrf`) | 0.723 | 0.390 | 0.634 |
| mem0_additive (`--retrieval-top-k 20 --adjacent-turns 2 --llm-query-expansion --fusion mem0_additive`) | 0.684 | 0.387 | 0.624 |
MaxSim+rerank wins clearly under the lenient and qwen3-instruct judges (about +0.025 each) and is first, by a near-tie margin, under the strict llama judge. The ordering MaxSim > RRF > mem0_additive is identical across all three judges. Published numbers from Mem0/EMem/Zep use a lenient frontier judge (gpt-4o-mini), so the `gemma4:e2b` 0.748 is the more apples-to-apples comparison with their headlines.
**Judge note.** Our earlier strict judge (`qwen3:4b`) is a thinking model whose current build no longer emits clean YES/NO verdicts, so the strict column now uses two non-thinking judges: `llama3.1:8b` and `qwen3:4b-instruct-2507`. Legacy strict figures from earlier tables (RRF 0.557, mem0 0.540) came from an older `qwen3:4b` build and are not directly comparable to the new judges. See [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md#judge-sensitivity--what-we-are-really-measuring) for the full multi-judge analysis.
**Default recipe (tier-gated).** Where the cross-encoder reranker is affordable (a GPU box, or any tier with headroom), MaxSim+rerank is the recommended default. On constrained tiers such as a Pi 4B on CPU, drop the reranker and use a lighter recipe (RRF or mem0_additive), trading roughly 0.02 to 0.06 for much lower latency. Both RRF and mem0_additive beat the older mem0-only guidance on every judge at full 1540, so any earlier "mem0_additive is the default" wording is superseded by this.
> **Subset 200 ≠ full 1540 for every recipe.** Earlier versions of this table reported subset-200 numbers for some rows. Validating those at full 1540 found the leader recipe (qwen+mem0+temp 0.2) generalises within −0.01 SH, but the previously-listed "Best Single-hop" pick (llama3.1:8b + RRF + temp 0.2) regressed by −0.16 SH at full scale and has been removed below. All ranks shown here are now validated at full 1540 before promotion; the asterisked rows are explicit about which scale they were measured at.
**Recommended generators at the 12 GB GPU tier** (leader recipe, dual-judge scored, temperature-tuned):
| Workload | Generator | Fusion + ingest | Temp | Overall (q3:4b / g4:e2b) | Single-hop (g4:e2b) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Best generator** | `qwen3.5:9b` Q4_K_M (5.3 GB) | `mem0_additive` | **0.2** | 0.54 / **0.68** | **0.55** | **Validated at full 1540.** Best generator at this tier; pair with the MaxSim+rerank recipe above where the reranker is affordable. |
| **Best Single-hop** (SH-heavy workloads) | `qwen3.5:9b` Q4_K_M (5.3 GB) | `mem0_additive` + `--emem-edu --emem-edu-no-filter` (extractor: `llama3.1:8b`) | **0.2** | 0.52 / 0.67 | **0.60** | **Validated at full 1540.** EMem-EDU ingest (one extra LLM call per session) trades −0.02 Overall for +0.07 SH vs the default. q3:4b SH lifts +0.10 (0.25 → 0.35). |
| Best mem0_additive Single-hop† | `llama3.1:8b` (4.9 GB) | `mem0_additive` | **0.0** | 0.51 / 0.65 | 0.60 | Subset 200. Greedy decoding lifted llama Single-hop +0.13 vs temp 0.2 in the temp sweep. Full-1540 validation pending. |
| **Best temporal reasoning**† | `mistral-small3.2` (~5 GB) | `rrf` | 0.2 | 0.56 / 0.70 | 0.53 | Subset 200. Wins Temporal (0.71). 2.8× slower than qwen, specialty pick only. Full-1540 validation pending. |
† Subset-200 measurement; the top two rows are validated at full 1540. The llama3.1:8b + RRF row from earlier versions of this table was removed after its full-1540 Single-hop measured at 0.49 (vs 0.65 on subset 200), failing the validation threshold.
Other measured 12 GB-tier generators (Overall under gemma4:e2b judge, leader recipe): `gemma4:e4b` 0.60 / 0.65 (best at temp 0.5), `gemma4:e2b` 0.60 (best at temp 0.5), `granite4:tiny-h` 0.56, `phi4-reasoning` timeout.
> **Per-generator temp sweet spots** (matters more than we expected): `qwen3.5:9b` peaks at temp 0.2; `llama3.1:8b` prefers fully-greedy (0.0); `gemma4:e4b` prefers 0.5 for Overall; `gemma4:e2b` prefers 0.0 for Single-hop. There's no universal sampling temperature for our local-tier stack, the right temp interacts with the model's training distribution. See `docs/benchmarks.md` for the per-generator × per-temp breakdown.
> **About the dual judge.** We score every new cell under two LLM judges: `qwen3:4b` (locally-runnable, deliberately strict, never refuses) and `gemma4:e2b` (lenient, calibrated closer to gpt-4o-mini). The *same predictions* score 0.28 vs 0.53 Single-hop respectively, judge strictness is a load-bearing variable in any LLM-judged benchmark. Reporting both is the honest middle ground between under-claiming under our strict judge and over-claiming under a frontier-API judge we can't afford to run on every cell. Hardware-tier defaults: 4-6 GB VRAM systems should keep `qwen3:4b` as their judge (fits comfortably, fast), 8 GB+ can run `gemma4:e2b` (7.2 GB) for matched-with-paper-SOTA comparison numbers.
Full table, the 9B quant cliff (8 quants from Q2 through Q6, including the 8 GB-tier IQ4_XS at 0.55), the answer-prompt-variants and ENGRAM-typed-retrieval negative results, judge-sensitivity analysis, and per-hardware-tier configurations in [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md). Tier breakouts for 4 GB / 8 GB / 16 GB Pi NPU tiers will land as those benches dual-rescore.
## Architecture
```
taOSmd Memory Stack (v0.4):
Memory Layers:
├── Temporal Knowledge Graph structured facts with validity windows
├── Vector Memory hybrid search (semantic + keyword boost, ONNX MiniLM or Nomic)
├── Zero-Loss Archive append-only JSONL, FTS5 full-text search
├── Session Catalog LLM-derived timeline directory over archives
└── Crystal Store compressed session digests with lessons
Processing:
├── Memory Extractor regex (15ms) + LLM fact extraction (qwen3:4b)
├── Session Splitter 30-min gap heuristic, per-session split files
├── Session Enricher LLM topic/description/category (tiered: 1=heuristic, 2=4B, 3=9B+)
├── Session Crystallizer narrative digests, outcomes, lessons → KG
├── Secret Filtering 23 regex patterns, auto-redact on all ingest paths
└── Retention Scoring Ebbinghaus decay with hot/warm/cold tiers
Retrieval:
├── Parallel Fan-Out query all layers simultaneously (thorough mode)
├── Query Expansion entity extraction + temporal resolution
├── Intent Classifier routes to optimal layer, weights RRF merge
├── Cross-Encoder Reranker ms-marco-MiniLM ONNX second-stage reranking
├── Graph Expansion BFS traversal from search results through KG
└── Context Assembler core/archival split, token-budgeted L0-L3
Integration:
├── Backend Abstraction pluggable interface for platforms (taOS, Claude Code, etc.)
└── Cross-Memory Reflection cluster-then-synthesize insights from KG
```
taOSmd is a standalone library. Platform features like job scheduling, worker management, gaming detection, and mesh sync live in the host platform (e.g., [taOS](https://github.com/jaylfc/tinyagentos)).
## Quick Start
```python
from taosmd import KnowledgeGraph, VectorMemory, Archive
# Temporal Knowledge Graph
kg = KnowledgeGraph("data/kg.db")
await kg.init()
await kg.add_triple("Jay", "created", "taOS")
facts = await kg.query_entity("Jay")
# Vector Memory (hybrid search)
vmem = VectorMemory("data/vectors.db", embed_mode="onnx", onnx_path="models/minilm-onnx")
await vmem.init()
await vmem.add("Jay created taOS, a personal AI operating system")
results = await vmem.search("What is taOS?", hybrid=True)
# Zero-Loss Archive
archive = Archive("data/archive")
await archive.init()
await archive.record("conversation", {"content": "Hello"}, summary="User greeted agent")
events = await archive.search_fts("hello")
```
### Conversational adjacency (opt-in)
For multi-turn data where surrounding turns add context, populate an integer position field at ingest and ask `retrieve()` for ±N positional neighbours. Worth +0.089 on LoCoMo same-tier, see [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md).
```python
from taosmd import VectorMemory, retrieve
vmem = VectorMemory("data/vectors.db", embed_mode="onnx", onnx_path="<taosmd-dir>/models/arctic-embed-s")
await vmem.init()
# Tag each turn with its position (and optional group, e.g. session)
for i, turn in enumerate(turns):
await vmem.add(turn["text"], metadata={"position": i, "session": "conv1"})
hits = await retrieve(
"what was discussed about the deploy?",
sources={"vector": vmem},
adjacent_neighbors=2, # default 0, opt in for the lever
position_key="position",
group_key="session", # confine neighbours to the same session
)
# Each hit may include a hits[i]["neighbors"] list of nearby turns
# (skipped at boundaries, when neighbours are themselves primary hits, or
# when the hit lacks the configured position/group keys).
```
### Binary embedding quantization (opt-in, for SBC / low-memory tiers)
Score retrieval by sign-bit Hamming similarity instead of full-precision cosine. Each vector collapses to **1 bit per dimension (32× smaller)** with integer-friendly distance, a footprint and CPU-speed win for memory-constrained or SBC deployments. It's **recall-neutral**: −0.001 / +0.005 across both judges on the full 1540-QA LoCoMo set (see [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md)). Off by default; standalone behaviour is unchanged unless you enable it.
```python
from taosmd import VectorMemory
# Default is full-precision cosine; opt in per store.
vmem = VectorMemory("data/vectors.db", embed_mode="onnx", onnx_path="<taosmd-dir>/models/arctic-embed-s", binary_quant=True)
await vmem.init()
# binary_quant is fixed for the store's lifetime: a binary-quant store
# persists packed sign bits, not float vectors, so an existing DB cannot
# be flipped between modes. Choose it at creation.
```
Use it when the vector-store footprint or CPU distance cost is your binding constraint rather than recall, e.g. an Orange Pi / Rock 5 holding a large memory. Keep it off on a GPU box where full-precision cosine is effectively free.
### Provable Memory (recall gate on by default)
Extraction turns conversations into facts, and extraction makes mistakes. Most memory systems discard the source after extracting, so a wrong fact is indistinguishable from a right one and the error rate is unmeasurable. taOSmd keeps a zero-loss archive, so every extracted claim stays linked to the source spans it came from. The claims layer uses that link to verify claims and to refuse to serve the ones that do not hold up.
How it works: at ingest, each extracted fact is stored as a claim tagged with its archive span ids. A background verify-pass (idle or manual, `taosmd verify`) shows a small cross-family local model only the cited spans and records `supported` / `partial` / `unsupported`, fail-closed (any model or network error leaves the claim unverified, never promoted). At recall, the `prefer_verified` gate (on by default, see the evidence below) demotes claims verified as unsupported out of the default results while keeping them queryable and in the archive, so a noisy verifier can never destroy a real memory. The gate only acts on claims affirmatively verified as unsupported or contradicted, so it is a safe no-op for raw hits and for installs that have not run the verify-pass; pass `prefer_verified="off"` to a search call to turn it off.
This makes the extraction-hallucination rate a standing metric rather than a one-off: on LoCoMo, **18.8% of regex-extracted facts were not fully supported by their source** (cross-family verified, `taosmd claims status` prints the live rate). A growing number of tools now measure memory quality; taOSmd measures it and then acts on it. In a pre-registered 200-question sweep the `prefer_verified` gate eliminated served-hallucination outright (a 0.04 served-unsupported rate dropped to 0.00) at no measured cost to answer accuracy or recall. A full tri-judge confirm at n=250 (E-018) then reproduced that under all three judges (strict llama3.1:8b, strict qwen3-4b-instruct, lenient gemma4:e2b): served-hallucination dropped to 0.000 every time, judged accuracy stayed within the 0.02 noise bound (a slight improvement under two of the three), and recall held within bound. With that evidence the gate is now **on by default**, the same pre-registered discipline as every other lever ([research report](docs/research-report.md)); it is a safe no-op until you populate and verify claims, and `prefer_verified="off"` opts out per call.
```bash
taosmd verify # run a verify-pass over unverified claims
taosmd claims status # print the live supported / unsupported rate
```
## Recipes (tier-aware config profiles)
A **recipe** is a named, declared config bundle (retrieval + ingest + generator + librarian settings) that carries its own benchmark scores, target hardware tier, and pros/cons. Instead of leaving the retrieval levers at their defaults, taOSmd ships a small registry of recipes we have actually measured (for example the `maxsim-rerank-9b` leader for a 12 GB GPU and a `lite-pi` no-LLM-ingest profile for an Orange Pi / CPU), and a **fresh install auto-detects your hardware and applies the best affordable recipe on first use**, so you run a benchmarked configuration rather than unconfigured defaults. No taOS or network is required: the hardware probe is local, and the reranker model (when a recipe asks for one) downloads on first use with progress and degrades gracefully if it is not yet present.
```python
import taosmd
# Inspect the built-in recipes (each carries scores, tier, pros/cons)
for r in taosmd.list_recipes():
print(r.id, r.metadata["tier"], r.metadata["scores"])
# What does this machine's hardware suggest? (ranked best-first)
best = taosmd.recommend()[0]
print("recommended:", best.id)
# Apply a recipe to an agent (or pass it as the global default); search() then uses it.
# A fresh agent auto-resolves to recommend()[0], so this is only for an explicit override.
taosmd.apply_recipe("my-agent", best.id)
```
`taosmd.recipe_schema()` returns the recipe bundle as a JSON Schema, so a host UI can render any recipe generically. The default is tier-gated: the reranking leader where the cross-encoder is affordable, a lighter recipe (RRF, or the lite profile) on constrained tiers. See [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md) for the per-recipe scores.
## Configuration and controls
A recipe sets the baseline; controls are the individual levers you can change on top of it. Every control is defined once in [`taosmd/controls.py`](taosmd/controls.py), and the standalone dashboard, the `/controls` API, the taOSmd app inside taOS, and this section all read that one registry, so they cannot drift. Each control falls into one of three scopes, and the scope is the honest answer to "does changing this take effect right away?":
- **Live (runtime):** takes effect on the next search. These overlay the active recipe per query.
- **Store-level:** changes how memories are indexed, so turning it on or off needs a re-index of the existing store, not a live toggle.
- **Consumer-side:** applied in your own answer-generation. taOSmd retrieves and serves memory; it does not generate answers, so these are documented recommendations, never a switch in core that silently does nothing.
You can set the live controls three ways: the dashboard Settings panel (presets plus an Advanced expander), the HTTP API (`GET /controls` returns the current settings and the schema; `POST /controls` applies a preset or per-control values), or a per-call argument that overrides the stored setting for one query (for example `search(..., prefer_verified="off")`). Inside taOS, the taOSmd app builds its settings UI against the same `GET`/`POST /controls` API and schema.
### Live controls (take effect on the next search)
| Control | Default | What it does | When to turn it on, and the trade-off | Resource cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `prefer_verified` | `prefer_verified` (on) | Demotes claims verified as unsupported out of default recall, while keeping them queryable and in the archive. | Eliminates served-hallucination (0.040 to 0.000) at no measured accuracy cost, tri-judge confirmed (E-018). `strict` additionally drops unverified claims and over-trades recall, so it stays opt-in. | No query-time cost; a safe no-op until the verify-pass is populated. |
| `reranker` | `off` | Re-scores the candidate pool with a cross-encoder (`bge-v2-m3`) before serving. | The F-013 accuracy win where the hardware affords it (a GPU box, or any tier with headroom). Drop it on a Pi-class CPU tier. | One model download (`bge-reranker-v2-m3`) plus a cross-encoder pass per query. |
| `fusion` | `rrf` | How dense and lexical hits are combined into one ranking (`rrf`, `mem0_additive`, or `boost`). | `rrf` and `mem0_additive` both beat the older mem0-only guidance at full scale; `boost` suits the smallest tiers. | None; it is a ranking-strategy choice. |
| `adjacent_turns` | `2` (range 0 to 4) | Includes N positional neighbours around each retrieved hit. | Worth about +0.089 on LoCoMo at 2; surrounding turns add context. Use 1 on a Pi-class tier. | A wider context window per hit (more tokens to the generator). |
| `graph_expansion` | `0` (off; range 0 to 2000) | Bi-temporal fact readback (Phase 1): appends a derived block of currently-valid knowledge-graph facts connected to the served hits. The int value is the block's token budget; `0` is off. Valid-time only, no `as-of` query surface yet (that is Phase 2). | Reads the already-populated fact store back into the answer context, aimed at the LoCoMo temporal and open-domain weak spot (E-024). Ships default-off: EventQA validation (E-025) is still pending, and it injects derived (not verbatim-turn) facts. | One KG read over the served hits' entities plus the added context tokens (up to the budget). |
### Store-level controls (a re-index to change)
| Control | Default | What it does | When to turn it on, and the trade-off | Resource cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `embedder` | `arctic-embed-s` | Which ONNX dense embedder backs retrieval, set at setup (`arctic-embed-s` or `minilm-onnx`). | `arctic-embed-s` scores +0.057 judged retrieval over MiniLM at the same 384 dims and latency. MiniLM is the model the 97.0% Recall@5 headline was measured on; on that same LongMemEval-S Recall@5 run arctic-embed-s scores 95.6% (478/500 vs 485/500, research report N-031). | A one-time model fetch; changing it re-embeds the whole store. |
| `binary_quant` | `off` | Stores 1 bit per dimension instead of full-precision floats. | 32x smaller vector footprint, recall-neutral; for SBC and low-memory tiers. | Re-embed to apply; then 32x smaller vectors and cheaper CPU distance. |
| `late_interaction` | `off` | Token-level MaxSim scoring; the store is built with per-token vectors. | Lifts evidence recall from 0.64 to 0.85 on LoCoMo, CPU-only, with no GPU or reranker. | Re-index to apply; then about 110 ms per query on a 16-core CPU. |
### Consumer-side recommendation (applied in your answer-generation)
| Control | Default | What it does | When to turn it on, and the trade-off | Resource cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `self_verify` | `off` | A CoVe-style check of the draft answer against the retrieved evidence, run in your answer-generation. | The dominant answer-quality lever on LongMemEval-S (the F-013 end-to-end Judge figures it was measured against were inflated by a since-fixed judge-parser bug, research report N-017; self-verify remains the strongest answer-prompt lever). taOSmd serves memory and does not generate answers, so this belongs in your answer-gen, paired with `reranker` for the verified-answer config. | A second LLM pass per answer; roughly doubles answer latency. |
| `generator_profile` | `balanced` | Selects the answer generator by workload. `balanced` (qwen3.5:9b on 12/8 GB, llama3.1:8b on 4 GB) is the multi-session and long-context leader and reproduces the previous behaviour. | Switch to `factual-recall` (granite4.1:8b on 12/8 GB, llama3.1:8b on 4 GB) for single-fact retrieval QA. It wins single-fact QA (LongMemEval, 54.8 Qwen / 60.4 llama full-500) but loses LoCoMo (0.475 vs 0.515 external judge), so it is opt-in. Set with `taosmd generator-profile set <id>` or from the dashboard Settings view (global, or per agent via the scope selector). On devices too small for a local generator the profile resolves to retrieval-only. | Loads a different generator model; `factual-recall` at the 12 and 8 GB tiers requires granite4.1:8b (4.9 GB q4). |
### Generator profiles
The answer generator is selectable by workload, not just by hardware tier. The default profile `balanced` (qwen3.5:9b on 12/8 GB, llama3.1:8b on a 4 GB GPU) is the multi-session and long-context leader and reproduces the previous behaviour. The `factual-recall` profile (granite4.1:8b on 12 and 8 GB GPUs, llama3.1:8b on 4 GB) wins single-fact retrieval QA, 54.8 Qwen / 60.4 llama on the corrected LongMemEval-S full-500, but loses on conversational and long-context workloads (LoCoMo 0.475 vs 0.515, external judge), so it is opt-in. granite4.1:8b is a statistical tie with the prior 12 GB pick gemma4:12b (53.8 / 61.4) at 4.9 GB q4 instead of 12 GB and under Apache-2.0, which is the tie-break. Select one with `taosmd generator-profile set <id>` (add `--agent NAME` for a single agent), or from the dashboard Settings view, which has a scope-aware selector that sets the global default or a specific agent's profile. On devices too small for a local generator the profile resolves to retrieval-only. The 4 GB factual pick stays llama3.1:8b, confirmed by the E-023 low-tier bench (F-015 in the research report); granite does not fit a 4 GB card. Evidence: research report F-016/E-024.
### Presets
One-tap bundles of the live controls. The recall gate is on globally by default; Minimal turns it off, Quality keeps it on, and Integrity steps up to the strict variant.
| Preset | `reranker` | `prefer_verified` | `fusion` | `adjacent_turns` | For |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Minimal | `off` | `off` | `rrf` | 1 | Fastest and lightest: plain retrieval, weak hardware or speed-first. |
| Quality | `bge-v2-m3` | `prefer_verified` | `rrf` | 2 | Best accuracy with the verified gate on (pair with `self_verify` in your answer-gen). |
| Integrity | `bge-v2-m3` | `strict` | `rrf` | 2 | Maximum purity: the strict gate drops unverified claims for auditable, zero-served-hallucination recall. |
The numbers above are cross-linked to their measurements in [docs/benchmarks.md](docs/benchmarks.md), and the full method and provenance for each lever are in the [research report](docs/research-report.md) (F-010 embedder, F-011 recall gate, F-013 reranking and self-verification, E-018 the tri-judge gate confirm).
## MCP server
taOSmd can expose its memory over the [Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) so any MCP-capable agent (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, OpenWebUI, …) can read and write memory directly, no custom integration. The server is local-first and offline: it speaks the **stdio** transport (the standard for desktop MCP clients), with no network listener and no cloud dependency.
The MCP SDK is an **optional dependency**, so the core install stays lean. From a source checkout:
```bash
pip install -e ".[mcp]"
```
Run the server over stdio:
```bash
taosmd mcp # serves $TAOSMD_DATA_DIR (or ~/.taosmd)
taosmd mcp --mcp-data-dir ./mem # or point it at a specific data dir
```
Point an MCP client at it by spawning that command. For example, in a Claude Desktop / Cursor MCP config:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"taosmd": {
"command": "taosmd",
"args": ["mcp"]
}
}
}
```
Tools exposed (memory tools each take an `agent` argument, honouring the same per-agent isolation as the Python API):
| Tool | Purpose |
| --- | --- |
| `memory_ingest(text, agent, project=None)` | Store a transcript/note in an agent's memory (optionally tagged with a project) |
| `memory_search(query, agent, limit=5, project=None, also_include=None)` | Retrieve passages relevant to a query; scope to a project and optionally read other agents' memories within it |
| `memory_list_projects()` | List projects that have stored memories |
| `memory_list_shelves(project)` | List the agent shelves within a project |
| `memory_pending_list(agent)` | List KG-update decisions awaiting review |
| `memory_pending_resolve(decision_id, decision, note="")` | Resolve a pending decision (`accept`/`reject`/`modify`) |
| `memory_stats(agent)` | Lightweight per-agent stats |
| `a2a_channels()` | List all named channels on the A2A bus |
| `a2a_members(channel)` | List distinct sender names observed on a channel |
| `a2a_send(channel, sender, body, reply_to=None)` | Post a message to a channel |
| `a2a_read(channel, since=None, limit=50)` | Read messages from a channel, oldest-first |
| `a2a_join(channel, agent)` | Announce an agent's presence on a channel with a join marker |
It reuses the same shared service layer as the [local HTTP/REST server](#api), so behaviour matches the Python API and CLI exactly. The MCP server is additive and opt-in, it only runs when you start it; standalone use is untouched, and `import taosmd` works whether or not the `mcp` SDK is installed.
## Remote server (client/server split)
By default taOSmd reads and writes a local data store on the same machine. When you want a thin client (a laptop, a desktop agent) to use memory that lives on a more capable machine (a Pi, a GPU box, a shared server), point the client at the server's HTTP URL and every data call routes there transparently.
### Starting the server
On the server machine, install taOSmd and start it as a background service, binding to all interfaces so remote clients can reach it:
```bash
# Install and start (binds 0.0.0.0:7900, installs systemd / LaunchAgent)
./scripts/install-server.sh
# or manually:
taosmd serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7900 --install-service
```
The helper scripts `scripts/install-server.sh` (bash) and `scripts/install-server.ps1` (PowerShell) automate the install, health-check, and Tailscale setup guidance.
### Pointing a client at the server
On each client machine:
```bash
# Install the client package and point it at the server
./scripts/install-client.sh http://pi.local:7900
# or manually:
git clone https://github.com/jaylfc/taosmd.git && cd taosmd && pip install -e .
taosmd config set-server http://pi.local:7900
```
The helper scripts `scripts/install-client.sh` (bash) and `scripts/install-client.ps1` (PowerShell) automate the package install, URL configuration, skill install, and health check.
You can also set the URL for a single invocation without touching the config:
```bash
taosmd --server http://pi.local:7900 agent list
```
Or export it for a shell session:
```bash
export TAOSMD_SERVER_URL=http://pi.local:7900
```
Resolution order (first non-empty wins): `TAOSMD_SERVER_URL` env var, then `server_url` in `~/.taosmd/config.json`, then local mode.
### Checking and clearing the config
```bash
taosmd config show # print server_url, whether a token is set, memory_model
taosmd config set-server --clear # revert to local mode
```
### Optional bearer token auth
By default there is no authentication. If the server is on a trusted private network (Tailscale, a home LAN), the network boundary is the access control. For defence in depth, you can require a bearer token:
```bash
# On the server:
taosmd config set-token <your-secret-token>
# Restart the service to pick up the new token.
taosmd serve --uninstall-service
taosmd serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7900 --install-service
# On each client:
taosmd config set-token <your-secret-token>
# Or, to keep the token out of config.json:
export TAOSMD_TOKEN=<your-secret-token>
```
The token is sent as `Authorization: Bearer <token>` on every request. `GET /health`, `GET /version`, and the web inspector (`GET /`) are always public so monitoring and capability probes keep working. Never commit the token to version control.
### How the Python API and MCP server interact with remote mode
The `RemoteClient` class (`taosmd.remote`) mirrors the same async interface as the local service module (`taosmd.service`). The CLI, Python API, and MCP server all check `TAOSMD_SERVER_URL` (and `config.json`) at startup and delegate to `RemoteClient` when a URL is configured. From the caller's perspective nothing changes: the same `taosmd.ingest()`, `taosmd.search()`, and A2A calls work in both modes.
## Key Features
- **97.0% Recall@5** on LongMemEval-S (retrieval metric, like-for-like with MemPalace 96.6% and agentmemory 95.2%), measured on our low-end reference stack; plus a separate end-to-end Judge number (retrieve, generate, grade); an earlier 74.6% figure for it was inflated by a since-fixed judge-parser bug and corrected to the 43 to 51 percent range on the shipped config; the shipped `factual-recall` profile (granite4.1:8b at 12/8 GB) reaches 54.8 / 60.4, parity with MemOS-lossless ([methodology](docs/benchmarks.md#end-to-end-judge-on-longmemeval-s-the-generation-side-number), research report N-017, F-016)
- **BEAM long-context benchmark (new)**, an early, fully-provenanced local-tier number on mem0's ICLR-2026 suite (conversations to 1M+ tokens, graded by mem0's own nugget judge): 47% at 100K and 40% at 1M with the local 9B. mem0's frontier-class numbers are 64 to 70% at 1M, so this is an honest local-tier result on a hard benchmark, not a leaderboard win, published with its methodology and negative results ([numbers](docs/benchmarks.md#beam-long-context-memory-benchmark-mem0-nugget-judge))
- **Zero cloud dependencies**, runs entirely on local hardware
- **Framework-agnostic**, Python API, CLI, [MCP server](#mcp-server), and local HTTP/REST API work with any agent framework
- **Hybrid search**, semantic similarity + keyword overlap boosting
- **Late-interaction retrieval (opt-in)**, token-level MaxSim scoring lifts evidence recall from 0.64 to 0.85 on LoCoMo and runs in about 110ms per query on a 16-core CPU, no GPU or reranker needed ([numbers](docs/benchmarks.md))
- **Upgraded low-tier embedding default**, fresh low-end installs now use `snowflake-arctic-embed-s` for dense retrieval: +0.057 judged retrieval quality on the full 1540-QA LoCoMo set (0.730 vs 0.674 for MiniLM) at the same 384 dimensions and the same latency, about 13ms per embed on an Orange Pi. MiniLM is still supported and is the model the 97.0% headline was measured on; on LongMemEval-S Recall@5 arctic-embed-s scores 95.6% to MiniLM's 97.0% (research report N-031) ([numbers](docs/benchmarks.md))
- **Bulk ingest with safe re-import**, `POST /ingest/batch` dedupes on your content hashes, plus a BM25-only search mode for instant keyword lookups
- **Built-in agent-to-agent bus**, `taosmd serve` ships a message bus with named channels, realtime SSE wake, and a poll cursor, so several agents on one project coordinate over the same server that holds their memory. Every message is an append-only archive event, so the whole conversation is auditable and replayable, not a separate mutable log.
- **Dependency-aware task graph**, `taosmd tasks` gives multi-agent teams a ready queue (open tasks with no open blockers) and a `prime` briefing endpoint for session handoffs; every mutation is an append-only archive event, so the task tables are replayable history (concept credit: [beads](https://github.com/gastownhall/beads))
- **Coordination is part of the memory, not bolted on**, we are not aware of another local-first memory system that ships an auditable comms bus and a dependency-aware task graph inside the memory server itself. Both are projections of the same zero-loss archive, so who said what and who did what are reconstructable from the source of truth.
- **Temporal facts**, validity windows, point-in-time queries
- **Contradiction detection**, corrected facts supersede across both the typed knowledge graph (via `valid_to` invalidation) and the vector recall layer (matching chunks soft-hidden, not deleted); recall returns only the active fact
- **Provable Memory (recall gate on by default)**, because the archive keeps every source span, taOSmd can verify each extracted fact against the spans it came from, mark it supported or unsupported, and demote (never delete) the unsupported ones at recall. The `prefer_verified` gate ships on by default (a full tri-judge confirm eliminated served-hallucination at no accuracy cost) and is a safe no-op until you run the verify-pass. That makes the extraction-hallucination rate a measurable, standing number: 18.8% of regex-extracted facts on LoCoMo were not fully supported by their source, cross-family verified. Extraction-based systems that discard the source cannot measure this; we can ([methodology](docs/research-report.md))
- **Zero-loss archive**, append-only, read-only transcript of the full picture (user + agent messages, tool calls and results, decisions, errors, plus opt-in user activity); the librarian derives memory from it, never over it
- **Intent-aware retrieval**, routes queries to optimal memory layer
- **0.3ms embeddings**, ONNX Runtime on CPU (ARM or x86)
- **Opt-in user tracking**, browsing history, app usage, search queries
## Embedding Model
Two ONNX embedders are supported, both 384-dimensional and CPU-fast. Neither is bundled (size); each is fetched on setup.
**`snowflake-arctic-embed-s`** is the dense default for fresh low-tier installs. It scores +0.057 judged retrieval quality on the full 1540-QA LoCoMo set (0.730 vs 0.674 for MiniLM) at the same dimensions and latency, so it is a free upgrade for the low-end tier. It uses an asymmetric query prefix and CLS pooling, both handled automatically. Fetch it:
```bash
hf download Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-embed-s --include "onnx/model.onnx" "*.json" "tokenizer*" --local-dir models/arctic-embed-s
```
**`all-MiniLM-L6-v2`** remains fully supported and is the model the 97.0% LongMemEval-S headline was measured on. Existing installs keep MiniLM unless you re-run setup; only fresh low-tier setups default to arctic. Download it:
```bash
pip install sentence-transformers
python -c "
from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer
model = SentenceTransformer('sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2')
model.save('models/minilm-onnx')
"
```
Or download directly from [HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2).
## Embedding Speed
| Backend | Speed | Notes |
|---------|-------|-------|
| ONNX Runtime (CPU) | 0.3ms | Fastest, recommended |
| RKNN (NPU) | 16.7ms | Works but CPU is faster for small models |
| PyTorch (CPU) | 64ms | Heaviest, most compatible |
## Hardware Tested
| Tier | Example | RAM | LLM runtime |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Reference low-end (primary author target)** | Orange Pi 5 Plus | 16 GB | rkllama on RK3588 NPU |
| SBC | Raspberry Pi 4B / 5 | 8 GB | Ollama on CPU |
| Mini PC / old laptop | Intel NUC, Mac mini, Lenovo Tiny | 8 to 16 GB | Ollama on CPU |
| Desktop / workstation | Any Linux/macOS box with NVIDIA GPU | 16 GB+ | Ollama on GPU |
Minimum: 8 GB RAM and Python 3.10+. NPU/GPU optional, they speed up LLM tasks but aren't required.
## Reference Setup (Orange Pi 5 Plus)
This is the author's primary deployment and the exact stack the 97.0% benchmark was measured on. Other tiers (Pi 4B, Intel mini, Mac mini, GPU box) run the same code, they swap the runtime (Ollama instead of rkllama, CPU/GPU instead of NPU) but keep the same models and the same architecture.
| Component | Model | Purpose | Runtime |
|-----------|-------|---------|---------|
| **Embedding** | all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (22M params) | Semantic vector search | ONNX Runtime on ARM CPU (0.3ms/embed) |
| **Embedding (alt)** | embeddinggemma-300M | Higher-quality 768-dim embeddings (vs MiniLM 384-dim) | qmd serve (llama.cpp, CPU) |
| **Reranker** | Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B | Result reranking | qmd serve (llama.cpp, CPU); rkllama NPU build installed but not used by default |
| **Query Expansion** | qmd-query-expansion 1.7B | Search query enrichment | qmd serve (llama.cpp, CPU) |
| **LLM (extraction + answering)** | Qwen3-4B | Fact extraction (72% recall) + QA from context | rkllama on RK3588 NPU (17s/turn) |
| **Vector Store** | SQLite + numpy | Cosine similarity search | CPU |
| **Full-Text Search** | SQLite FTS5 | Keyword search over archive | CPU |
| **Knowledge Graph** | SQLite | Temporal entity-relationship triples | CPU |
**Everything in this reference stack runs on the Pi itself; no external server needed for this tier.** The Qwen3-4B handles both fact extraction and question answering on the NPU. The ONNX embedding model runs in-process on the CPU. An optional GPU worker (e.g. Fedora with RTX 3060) can accelerate LLM tasks ~10x but is not required, the Pi is fully self-contained.
### Model Files
| Model | Size | Source |
|-------|------|--------|
| all-MiniLM-L6-v2 ONNX | 90MB | [onnx-models/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-onnx](https://huggingface.co/onnx-models/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-onnx) |
| embeddinggemma-300M GGUF | ~320MB | Auto-fetched by `qmd` (CPU embedding backend) |
| Qwen3-Reranker-0.6B | 639MB | GGUF Q8_0, auto-fetched by `qmd` (an RKLLM build ships with rkllama but is optional) |
| qmd-query-expansion 1.7B | 1.28GB | GGUF q4_k_m, auto-fetched by `qmd` |
| Qwen3-4B RKLLM | 4.6GB | [dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base](https://huggingface.co/dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base) |
## Platform-Specific Setup
### Linux / macOS / Windows (no NPU)
The default Manual Install path. Ollama serves the LLM, ONNX Runtime serves embeddings on the CPU. No platform-specific steps beyond the standard install.
### RK3588 NPU (Orange Pi / Rock 5 / Radxa)
```bash
# Install rkllama (serves models on the NPU)
# See: https://github.com/NotPunchnox/rkllama
# The setup script handles this automatically, or manually:
hf download dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base \
Qwen3-4B-rk3588-w8a8-opt-1-hybrid-ratio-0.0.rkllm \
--local-dir ~/.rkllama/models/qwen3-4b-chat
```
### Optional: GPU Worker (x86 + NVIDIA)
Not required for any tier, the LLM runs locally on whatever you've got. A GPU worker accelerates LLM tasks ~10x if you want to offload from a smaller node:
```bash
# On your GPU machine
ollama pull qwen3:4b # Same model as the smaller node, same quality
# Point taOSmd at the GPU worker: pass the URL where you construct the
# LLM-backed pieces (there is no TAOSMD_LLM_URL environment variable), e.g.
# CatalogPipeline(..., llm_url="http://<gpu-machine>:11434")
# crystals.crystallize(..., llm_url="http://<gpu-machine>:11434")
```
## API
`taosmd serve` starts a local HTTP/REST server (default `127.0.0.1:7900`, stdlib only, no new dependencies). It is a thin JSON shell over the same service layer as the Python API and CLI, so behaviour is identical across surfaces. Every endpoint that takes an `agent` parameter forwards it to the service layer, honouring the same per-agent isolation as the Python API.
**Security note:** the server binds `127.0.0.1` by default, no auth is needed because only local processes can reach it. If you pass `--host 0.0.0.0` to expose it on a LAN, there is no authentication; put it behind your own network controls.
### Endpoints
| Method | Path | Request | Response |
|--------|------|---------|----------|
| `GET` | `/health` | (none) | `{"status": "ok", "version": <str>, "capabilities": [<str>]}` |
| `GET` | `/version` | (none) | `{"version", "commit", "commit_source", "built_at", "built_at_source", "capabilities"}` |
| `POST` | `/ingest` | `{"text": str, "agent": str, "project"?: str}` | `{"archived": int, "agent": str, "project": str\|null, "data_dir": str, ...}` (adds `"vector_failures": int` and `"degraded": true` when the embedder fails) |
| `POST` | `/ingest/batch` | `{"items": [{"text": str, "id"?: str, "metadata"?: obj}], "agent": str, "project"?: str}` | `{"ingested": int, "skipped": int, ...}` |
| `POST` | `/search` | `{"query": str, "agent": str, "limit"?: int, "project"?: str, "also_include"?: [str], "mode"?: "bm25"}` | `{"hits": [...]}` |
| `GET` | `/search` | `?q=<query>&agent=<agent>&limit=<int>&project=<id>&also_include=a,b&mode=bm25` | `{"hits": [...]}` |
| `GET` | `/projects` | (none) | `{"projects": [{"project_id", "agents", "last_ingest"}]}` |
| `GET` | `/shelves` | `?project=<id>` | `{"shelves": [{"agent", "facts", "last_ingest"}]}` |
| `GET` | `/pending` | `?agent=<agent>&limit=<int>` | `{"pending": [...]}` |
| `POST` | `/pending/resolve` | `{"id": str, "decision": "accept"\|"reject"\|"modify", "note"?: str}` | `{"ok": bool, "applied_kg": bool, "resolution": str}` |
| `POST` | `/tasks` | `{"title": str, "body"?, "project"?, "assignee"?, "priority"?, "depends_on"?: [id]}` | task object |
| `GET` | `/tasks` | `?status=&project=&assignee=&limit=` | `{"tasks": [...]}` |
| `GET` | `/tasks/ready` | `?project=&assignee=&limit=` | unblocked tasks, priority order |
| `GET` | `/tasks/prime` | `?project=&assignee=` | `{"text": <briefing>, "tasks": [...]}` |
| `GET` | `/tasks/edges` | `?from_id=&to_id=&type=&project=&limit=` | `{"edges": [...]}` |
| `POST` | `/tasks/{id}` | `{"status"?, "assignee"?, "priority"?, "body"?}` | updated task |
| `POST` | `/tasks/{id}/edges` (+ `/edges/remove`) | `{"to_id": str, "type": "blocks"\|"parent"\|"relates"\|"duplicates"}` | edge receipt |
Each hit in `/search` results has the agent-rules contract shape: `{text, source, timestamp, confidence, metadata}`.
`/ingest/batch` is the bulk-import path: each item can carry a stable `id` (your content hash), preserved as `source_id` and used to skip already-imported items, so the whole batch can be re-POSTed safely after a partial migration. `mode=bm25` on `/search` skips query embedding entirely and returns keyword-ranked hits in about 10ms, built for search-as-you-type UIs over short-form memory; the default mode remains the full recipe-driven retrieval.
### Version and capability discovery
Do not probe for a feature with a status code. `taosmd serve` answers unknown non-API paths with the dashboard SPA, so `GET /collections` returns `200 text/html` even on a build that has no collections code at all. Ask `GET /version` instead:
```bash
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:7900/version
```
```json
{
"version": "0.4.0",
"commit": "76f72ffef139a9cc08c76d7348b9b25849c845a6",
"commit_source": "git",
"built_at": "2026-07-21T11:38:52Z",
"built_at_source": "install",
"capabilities": [
"a2a.v1", "collections.v1", "grants.v1", "graph.v1",
"ingest.v1", "search.v1", "shelves.v1", "tasks.v1", "temporal.v1"
]
}
```
`capabilities` is a list of **stable contract identifiers**, not feature names. The `.vN` suffix is the contract: when a wire contract changes in a way that breaks existing callers, the identifier becomes `collections.v2`, so a client pinned to `collections.v1` sees the capability disappear (a visible break it can act on) instead of `collections` quietly meaning something new. Additive changes keep the same identifier. The right client check is membership:
```python
caps = set(requests.get(f"{base}/version").json()["capabilities"])
if "collections.v1" not in caps:
raise RuntimeError("this taOSmd build does not speak collections.v1")
```
The list is derived at runtime by probing the running build (see `taosmd/capabilities.py`), so it cannot advertise a feature whose code is absent. `commit` and `built_at` are best-effort and may be `null` (see the table below); they are there so an operator can spot a box running a stale build. `/version` is unauthenticated and cheap, like `/health`, and exposes nothing beyond build identity and capability identifiers (no paths, no tokens, no configuration).
`GET /health` returns the same `capabilities` list alongside its existing `{"status", "version"}` keys, which are unchanged.
| Field | Meaning |
|-------|---------|
| `commit` | 40-char sha of the build, or `null` |
| `commit_source` | `"git"` (resolved from the checkout), `"build-stamp"` (packaged `taosmd/_build_info.py`), or `null` |
| `built_at` | ISO 8601 UTC build or install time, or `null` |
| `built_at_source` | `"build-stamp"`, `"install"` (dist-info mtime), or `null` |
### Agent-to-agent (A2A) bus
`taosmd serve` also exposes a lightweight message bus for agent-to-agent communication on the same port:
| Method | Path | Request | Response |
|--------|------|---------|----------|
| `POST` | `/a2a/send` | `{"from": str, "body": str, "thread"?: str, "reply_to"?: str}` | `{"id": str, "from": str, "thread": str, "reply_to": str\|null}` |
| `GET` | `/a2a/messages` | `?thread=<str>&since=<unix-ts>&limit=<int>` | `{"messages": [...]}` (oldest-first) |
| `GET` | `/a2a/stream` | `?thread=<str>&since=<unix-ts>` | SSE stream (`text/event-stream`), one JSON message per `data:` frame |
| `GET` | `/a2a/channels` | (none) | `{"channels": [...]}` (list of all named channels) |
| `GET` | `/a2a/members` | `?channel=<name>` | `{"members": [...]}` (distinct sender names on the channel) |
Messages are stored as append-only archive events, so they inherit the archive's durability and automatic secret redaction. `thread` defaults to `"general"` when omitted from `/a2a/send`. Each message object has shape `{id, ts, from, body, thread, reply_to}`.
Three CLI commands consume the bus for monitoring (all share an id-based, exactly-once cursor and a `--exclude <sender>` filter): `taosmd a2a-poll` fetches only-new messages and updates a small state file (cron-friendly, durable across sessions); `taosmd a2a-watch` holds the SSE stream and prints one line per new message for instant in-session pickup; and `taosmd a2a-bridge --trigger <cmd>` runs a command per new message with the message JSON on stdin, which can wake a dormant agent on arrival. The bundled `taosmd-a2a` skill (`taosmd install-skill`) walks through joining a channel and setting up durable or realtime monitoring.
### Web dashboard
`GET /` and `GET /ui` serve a local web dashboard, a bundled React single-page app served entirely from local assets (no CDN, works fully offline); if the assets have not been built, the server falls back to a minimal self-contained stdlib inspector page. It wears taOS's macOS-style theme with a dark and a light scheme and a toggle. The tabs:
- **Home** is an overview over `GET /stats`: stat cards (total memories, agents, projects, verified facts), a memory-growth chart, the verification-coverage donut (verified, unverified, and flagged, with the live hallucination rate, the number no other memory system surfaces), top categories and top agents and projects, and a recent-memories browse list. A scope selector switches the whole view between all memory, the reserved `user` namespace, and any individual agent.
- **Memory** searches what an agent remembers.
- **Explorer** renders the temporal knowledge graph as a force-directed galaxy over `GET /graph`: entities as nodes sized by connectivity, relations as edges, superseded facts faded, with pan, zoom, and click-to-detail. The force layout (`d3-force`) is bundled, so the view stays offline.
- **Projects**, **Pending**, and **A2A channels** browse projects, the pending-review queue, and a live A2A channel monitor (history backfill plus live SSE updates).
- **Settings** reads and writes the memory controls through `GET`/`POST /controls` (presets plus an Advanced expander).
Charts are hand-rolled SVG, every view is keyboard-navigable and ARIA-labelled, and reads stay non-destructive: the data and `/controls` endpoints are the integration surface.
### Persistent service
To run the server as a background service (systemd on Linux, launchd on macOS, or a Scheduled Task on Windows), use `--install-service`:
```bash
taosmd serve --install-service # install with defaults
taosmd serve --port 8080 --install-service # custom port
taosmd serve --service-status # check running state
taosmd serve --uninstall-service # stop and remove
```
See [docs/serve-service.md](docs/serve-service.md) for platform-specific details, log locations, and how to change host/port/data-dir after installation.
### Maintenance: reconcile the vector store
A crash between the archive write and the vector-store write in `ingest()` can leave a conversation turn in the archive but absent from vector recall. The archive is the source of truth; `reconcile` detects and repairs that gap:
```bash
taosmd reconcile # repair all registered agents
taosmd reconcile --agent myagent # repair one agent
taosmd reconcile --check # dry-run: report missing counts without modifying
```
`--check` exits non-zero when any turn is missing, so you can run it from a cron health-check. The repair path re-adds only turns that are genuinely absent; it never resurrects turns that were intentionally superseded by a correction. Safe to run after a crash or periodically via cron.
### Install the taOSmd-a2a skill
```bash
taosmd install-skill
```
Copies the bundled `taosmd-a2a` agent-setup skill into `~/.claude/skills/taosmd-a2a/` so it is available across all Claude Code projects. Pass `--force` to overwrite an existing installation.
## Running Benchmarks
```bash
# Full LongMemEval-S benchmark (500 questions)
python benchmarks/longmemeval_runner.py --limit 500
# Recall@5 only
python benchmarks/longmemeval_recall.py
# Per-category breakdown
python benchmarks/longmemeval_granularity.py
# LoCoMo (1540 QAs, multi-session conversations)
python benchmarks/locomo_runner.py --model gemma4:e2b
# LoCoMo with tunable retrieval levers (see docs/benchmarks.md)
python benchmarks/locomo_runner.py --model gemma4:e2b \
--retrieval-top-k 20 --adjacent-turns 2 --llm-query-expansion
```
All benchmark numbers in `docs/benchmarks.md` pin the commit they were measured on.
## Support
If taOSmd is useful to you:
- **Star this repo**, it helps others find it
- **Donate:** [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/jaylfc)
- **Contact:** jaylfc25@gmail.com
- **Hardware donations/loans:** We test on real hardware. If you have spare SBCs, GPUs, or dev boards and want to help expand compatibility, reach out.
## License
taOSmd is open source under the [GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later](./LICENSE) (AGPL-3.0-or-later), copyright jaylfc.
You may use, modify, fork, embed and self-host taOSmd freely under the AGPL, including for your own organisation's internal purposes. The AGPL's one condition for network use is that if you run a modified taOSmd as a service for others, you make your modified source available to those users, also under the AGPL.
There is no separate commercial license: AGPL-3.0-or-later is the only license taOSmd is offered under, and contributions are accepted under the same terms. Releases before this change were published under MIT with the Commons Clause, and copies obtained under those terms keep them.
## Dependencies & Acknowledgements
**Core taOSmd (the 97.0% benchmark) is fully self-contained**, it uses only standard packages (SQLite, numpy, ONNX Runtime) plus the MiniLM embedding model. No external servers or forked repos needed.
**Optional integrations for the full taOS stack:**
| Component | Source | Notes |
|-----------|--------|-------|
| QMD (embedding / reranking / query expansion) | [jaylfc/qmd](https://github.com/jaylfc/qmd) (fork, on npm as `@jaylfc/qmd`) | Forked from [tobi/qmd](https://github.com/tobi/qmd), published as `@jaylfc/qmd` (currently 2.6.1). Adds a pluggable model backend: `qmd serve` (HTTP model server) plus remote / Ollama-compatible backends (`--server`, `--backend ollama`) so embeddings, reranking and expansion can be served by an Ollama or NPU host. |
| rkllama (NPU model serving) | [NotPunchnox/rkllama](https://github.com/NotPunchnox/rkllama) | Upstream with minor patches for rerank endpoint |
| ONNX MiniLM | [onnx-models/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-onnx](https://huggingface.co/onnx-models/all-MiniLM-L6-v2-onnx) | Standard pre-exported model |
| Qwen3-4B RKLLM | [dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base](https://huggingface.co/dulimov/Qwen3-4B-rk3588-1.2.1-base) | Community RK3588 conversion |
## Credits
Built by the [taOS](https://github.com/jaylfc/tinyagentos) project.
Benchmark dataset: [LongMemEval](https://github.com/xiaowu0162/LongMemEval) (ICLR 2025)
Embedding model: [all-MiniLM-L6-v2](https://huggingface.co/sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2)