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title, type, status, created, updated, verified_on, confidence, tags, sources
| title | type | status | created | updated | verified_on | confidence | tags | sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory Backends | comparison | active | 2026-07-22 | 2026-08-12 | 2026-08-12 | high |
|
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Memory Backends
Purpose
Document Hermes's memory backend on this box, and record why the taxonomy this page assumed (Hindsight, Mnemosyne, file-backed) doesn't actually apply here.
Correction (2026-07-22, per Anthony)
This wiki previously stated Hindsight was this box's predecessor memory backend, based on archived hindsight-* script names found under ~/.hermes/scripts/ and a "Hindsight clean memory bank" mention in current-state.md. That was wrong — Hindsight has nothing to do with this Hermes box. It was confused with a different Hermes instance (most likely ct450 "hermesagent", the older/original Hermes install still running in this homelab — see infrastructure/domains-and-tunnels). All Hindsight-specific pages (systems/hindsight.md, decisions/use-hindsight-for-memory.md, runbooks/check-hindsight.md) have been deleted rather than left as deprecated stubs, since they describe something that was never true of this box.
The three archived scripts (hindsight-watchdog.py.archived, hindsight_migration_watchdog.py.archived, honcho_to_hindsight_import.py.archived) that had been sitting under ~/.hermes/scripts/ were removed on 2026-07-22 at Anthony's request, closing out the mix-up entirely.
What's actually true here
- Only backend ever verified on this box: Mnemosyne — local native plugin (
~/.hermes/plugins/mnemosyne), not a docker service. See systems/mnemosyne and systems/memory-backend for full config. - No evidence of a file-backed-only memory mode being used either — it's Mnemosyne or nothing on this install.
OpenViking evaluation (2026-08-12) — NOT adopted
- Anthony explored OpenViking (Volcengine/ByteDance context database, filesystem-style knowledge hierarchy, tiered retrieval, 6-category auto extraction) as a potential memory provider.
- Not adopted:
memory.provideris single-slot — settinghermes config set memory.provider openvikingwould fully replace Mnemosyne, with no parallel/dual-active mode. - Risk assessment flagged: schema mismatch, embedding drift, scope leakage, provenance loss, and one-way/no-rollback migration with no dry-run snapshot.
- Verdict: stay on Mnemosyne. Config verified
memory.provider: mnemosyne(2026-08-12). No migration was performed.