Show HN: Mnemo – local-first AI memory layer for any LLM (Rust, SQLite,petgraph)

6/3/2026 at 9:39:41 PM

Given the abundance of vaguely similar local-first AI memory layers, it might be a good idea to add a "Why Mnemo" section right at the top of README.md to explain why folks should consider using it.

by georgespencer

6/3/2026 at 11:50:08 PM

Or just wait a week and whatever’s built into your harness de jour will be as good or better than whatever homebrew solutions are out there

> Most LLMs forget everything the moment a conversation ends. mnemo fixes that

Even the opening line of the README is obviously very out of date. Might be true if you’re raw-dogging a model or using a basic agent SDK

by cush

6/4/2026 at 12:14:19 AM

After working with LLMs a bunch, I now want them to forget everything every time I end the conversation. Otherwise they get dumber and more confused over time.

LLMs do not have memory and these "memory" systems that everyone makes don't change that fact. They just clutter up context with probably irrelevant noise. I don't want the LLM to remember everything I've ever said and try to make every project align with often contradictory or unrelated facts, rules, guidelines, practices, whatever, because when it tries it gets messier and makes worse software.

I don't want the LLM to be my friend and remember my birthday. I have it write plans, developer docs, test suites, and static analysis into every project. That's the "memory". It's compatible with every agent, it's in their native tongue (Markdown and code), and it's focused on the specific project.

by SwellJoe

6/4/2026 at 12:11:23 PM

Yep, the memory in the ChatGPT macOS app is also starting to piss me off. I think developers generally dislike ‘hidden’ state, which is what memory essentially becomes.

by menno-sh

6/4/2026 at 12:49:41 PM

[dead]

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 3:55:00 PM

I’m not sure how your reply is related to my comment. Harnesses come with capable memory systems. If you want your harness to forget then turn it off.

by cush

6/4/2026 at 12:27:49 AM

[dead]

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 1:53:50 AM

Done "Why mnemo" section added to the README with a comparison table. Short version: single Rust binary, zero cloud, petgraph knowledge graph with multi-hop traversal, scored retrieval. Link in case you want to check it: github.com/zaydmulani09/mnemo

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 12:27:33 AM

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by zaydmulani

6/3/2026 at 9:47:44 PM

You forgot BM25 embeddings.

https://github.com/MikeS071/ai-engram

https://github.com/lamost423/openclaw-hybrid-memory

https://medium.com/@qdrddr/agentic-memory-framework-hindsigh...

https://clawhub.ai/vnesin-sarai/hybrid-retrieval

https://www.josecasanova.com/blog/openclaw-qmd-memory

https://medium.com/@richardhightower/stop-the-hallucinations...

https://github.com/oomkapwn/enquire-mcp#-why-its-the-best

https://github.com/rohitg00/agentmemory#key-capabilities

https://github.com/Melody-0321/NE-Memory-Core

https://github.com/ClaudioDrews/memory-os

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi_BM25

> It is based on the probabilistic retrieval framework developed in the 1970s and 1980s

Anyway, good for ya, hope you had fun building it.

by bilbo-b-baggins

6/3/2026 at 10:11:14 PM

I haven't seen one unique product in AI, everyone is building the same thing

by asdev

6/3/2026 at 11:19:18 PM

Fair. The differentiator is the Rust single binary + petgraph knowledge graph. No Python runtime, no cloud, survives restarts. Built it because nothing local fit that profile.

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 12:00:21 PM

I rolled the same thing in Go months ago as I am sure at least another 1000 people have in their own way.

by fractorial

6/4/2026 at 12:49:20 PM

Would genuinely be interested to see it. link? The graph traversal approach seems underexplored compared to pure vector search.

by zaydmulani

6/3/2026 at 10:54:32 PM

Do any of them work properly yet?

by andai

6/6/2026 at 3:37:36 PM

sure they do.. but it's painful

how to capture, what to capture, when to capture it.. where to put it.. how to make it 'useful'.. how to reinject it or make it accessible

the harness makers may well come up with better means than flat files, but there are loads of folks out there working across different harnesses and in teams, and there's very little that works in that respect.

why I built mori - https://github.com/fjwood69/mori

use it solo, use it in your homelab/office, use it in the cloud with a team..

by fjwood69

6/3/2026 at 11:18:50 PM

BM25 is in my other project vecdb. mnemo's retrieval is graph-first — entity deduplication, multi-hop traversal, session-scoped scoring. Different tradeoff, not an oversight.

by zaydmulani

6/3/2026 at 10:10:24 PM

Everybody builds one. And, then they usually figure out that making the model fill its context with a bunch of memories hurts performance more often than it helps.

by SwellJoe

6/3/2026 at 11:40:25 PM

That's why I always ask: got benchmarks?

by esafak

6/4/2026 at 12:28:05 AM

Yes — cargo run -p mnemo-bench. Ships with 12 benchmarks. Full retrieval pipeline is ~4ms on debug build. Numbers are in the README performance table.

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 2:03:43 AM

I don't care if it's fast, if it makes the model dumber by cluttering up context.

by SwellJoe

6/4/2026 at 2:36:19 AM

[flagged]

by zaydmulani

6/3/2026 at 11:19:33 PM

[dead]

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 12:17:05 AM

[dead]

by kdkdkdjdksksn

6/4/2026 at 12:58:31 AM

I tend to agree with the rest of the commenters that the most likely outcome is that harnesses will include features like this. I had a slightly different issue and that was 'project-level memory' that i can use across models or harnesses (chat, claude code, etc).

for a while i used Obsidian but it was not very good with hosted tools like claude.ai then i moved to a combination of Linear and Notion. Still using Linear but Notion ended up being a royal pain: it is built for humans not agents. It is block based and when multiple agents use it there is a lot of corruption in the process.

I wanted a markdown only, notion built for agents that can work with multiple agents so built one: markbase.cloud

feel free to try and use it. i think it's useful

by ksajadi

6/6/2026 at 3:48:35 PM

Yes, the multi-agent governance takes a lot of solving.. thus far I've gotten Hermes writing to the same memory store that Claude code, antigravity, cursor, etc can all contribute, pull from, but it's taken a whole separate layer of governance.

Agents that can write to shared memory are powerful. Agents that can write to shared memory without oversight are a liability. Mori has the governance layer - https://github.com/fjwood69/mori

by fjwood69

6/4/2026 at 1:13:35 AM

[dead]

by zaydmulani

6/5/2026 at 1:00:49 PM

> and injects relevant context back into future prompts

It looks like this is left as an exercise for the student?

by zamalek

6/4/2026 at 1:26:22 PM

Nice approach, the Rust performance and single-binary deployment are compelling. Question, how do you handle contradictory facts? If John moves from Stripe to Google, does the graph resolve that, or does it store both?

by andywidjaja

6/4/2026 at 8:28:11 PM

[flagged]

by zaydmulani

6/4/2026 at 10:37:49 AM

I think we are all experiencing more or less the same kind of pain regarding memory+llms, and love to see how different approaches exist this problem.

How does mnemo decides when to forget something? So old history wont pollute the new answers?

by vichoiglesias

6/4/2026 at 11:16:26 AM

Currently mnemo doesn't have automatic forgetting it's on the v0.2.0 roadmap. The mitigation right now is that retrieval scoring weights recency, so older chunks naturally rank lower than recent ones. A TTL system and explicit memory decay are the right long-term fix. Good callout.

by zaydmulani

6/6/2026 at 3:51:48 PM

[flagged]

by fjwood69

6/4/2026 at 4:01:02 AM

Brew installation? Not looking to use pip or load manually.

For single bins or otherwise, brew is definitely preferred.

by pylotlight

6/4/2026 at 11:17:00 AM

Homebrew tap is on the roadmap. For now the fastest path on Mac is cargo install --path crates/mnemo-api or the Docker one liner. Will add a brew tap for v0.2.0.

by zaydmulani

6/3/2026 at 11:38:46 PM

Is there any relevance with another tool call mnemon?

by phantomathkg

6/4/2026 at 12:28:19 AM

Different project — mnemon is a Python-based memory tool. mnemo is a Rust binary with a knowledge graph layer and REST API sidecar. Similar name, different approach.

by zaydmulani

6/6/2026 at 7:07:22 AM

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by sikamikanikobg

6/6/2026 at 2:15:38 AM

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by jazzen

6/6/2026 at 2:05:10 AM

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by xuanlin314

6/4/2026 at 6:03:22 PM

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by Pixel-Labs

6/5/2026 at 2:12:21 AM

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by xuanlin314

6/4/2026 at 12:11:22 AM

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by rayan_