hermes-skills/holographic-memory/SKILL.md

name, description, version, author, license, metadata

name	description	version	author	license	metadata
holographic-memory	Configure and use Holographic as Hermes Agent's memory provider — local SQLite, FTS5 search, trust scoring, HRR algebra. Covers setup, migration from other providers, tool usage, and cleanup.	1.0.0	Hermes Agent	MIT	hermes tags related_skills holographic memory sqlite local migration hermes hermes-agent hermes-config-bulk-update

Holographic Memory — Local SQLite Provider for Hermes Agent

Holographic is Hermes' zero-dependency local memory provider. It stores facts in a local SQLite database with FTS5 full-text search, trust scoring, and HRR (Holographic Reduced Representations) for compositional algebraic queries. No API keys, no daemon, no external services.

When to Use

• Setting up Holographic as the memory provider
• Migrating from Hindsight (or any other provider) to Holographic
• Understanding Holographic's tools and capabilities
• Troubleshooting Holographic memory issues

Memory system roles: Holographic is the real-time, always-working, automatic memory provider — it handles cross-session recall via fact_store. The agent searches Holographic freely and automatically. Qdrant memories collection is a shared long-term archive across all profiles, auto-populated by a Holographic sync cron job. The agent does NOT search Qdrant unless explicitly told to — it's write-only from the agent's perspective. See /home/n8n/workspace/general/new_holographic.md for the full Holographic→Qdrant sync design.

Quick Setup

# Interactive wizard (easiest)
hermes memory setup    # select "holographic"

# Or directly
hermes config set memory.provider holographic

Verify:

hermes memory status
# Should show: Provider: holographic, Status: available ✓

Migration from Hindsight

Complete removal + switch to Holographic:

1. Switch provider

hermes config set memory.provider holographic

2. Kill Hindsight daemon

pkill -f hindsight

3. Uninstall Hindsight packages

pip uninstall hindsight hindsight-all hindsight-client -y

4. Clean profile directories

# Remove hindsight config dirs from all profiles
find ~/.hermes/profiles -maxdepth 3 -name 'hindsight' -type d -exec rm -rf {} + 2>/dev/null
# Remove hindsight log files
find ~/.hermes/profiles -maxdepth 3 -name 'hindsight-embed.log' -type f -exec rm -rf {} + 2>/dev/null
# Remove base hindsight dir
rm -rf ~/.hermes/hindsight

5. Strip HINDSIGHT env vars

# From base .env
sed -i '/^HINDSIGHT/d' ~/.hermes/.env
# From all profile .env files
for f in ~/.hermes/profiles/*/.env; do
  sed -i '/^HINDSIGHT/d' "$f"
done

6. Clean venv leftovers

# Remove site-packages
rm -rf ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/hindsight*
rm -rf ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/.venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/hindsight*
# Remove binaries
rm -f ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/bin/hindsight-*
rm -f ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/.venv/bin/hindsight-*

7. Verify

hermes memory status
grep -r 'HINDSIGHT' ~/.hermes/.env ~/.hermes/profiles/*/.env 2>/dev/null  # should return nothing

Configuration

Config lives in config.yaml under plugins.hermes-memory-store:

Key	Default	Description
db_path	$HERMES_HOME/memory_store.db	SQLite database path
auto_extract	false	Auto-extract facts at session end
default_trust	0.5	Default trust score (0.0–1.0)

Minimal config — Holographic works out of the box with zero additional settings.

Tools

Holographic provides two tools:

fact_store — 9 actions

Action	Description
add	Store a new fact
search	FTS5 full-text search
probe	Entity-specific algebraic recall (all facts about a person/thing)
related	Find facts related to a given fact
reason	Compositional AND queries across multiple entities
contradict	Automated detection of conflicting facts
update	Update an existing fact
remove	Delete a fact
list	List all facts

fact_feedback — Trust scoring

Rate facts as helpful or unhelpful. Trust scores adjust asymmetrically:

• Helpful: +0.05
• Unhelpful: -0.10

This pushes the store toward self-correction over time.

Unique Capabilities

• probe — entity-specific algebraic recall. Ask "what do we know about X?" and get all facts about that entity.
• reason — compositional AND queries. "What do we know about X AND Y?" combines multiple entity probes.
• contradict — automatic conflict detection. Finds facts that disagree with each other.
• Trust scoring — memories confirmed repeatedly gain weight; contradicted memories lose weight.

Architecture

• Storage: Local SQLite with FTS5 extension
• Retrieval: HRR (Holographic Reduced Representations) — algebraic rather than pure semantic similarity
• Dependencies: None (SQLite is always available). NumPy optional for HRR algebra.
• Cost: Free
• Data location: $HERMES_HOME/memory_store.db (profile-scoped)

Profile Isolation

Each profile gets its own SQLite database at $HERMES_HOME/memory_store.db. Since $HERMES_HOME differs per profile, data is naturally isolated.

Comparison with Hindsight

Dimension	Holographic	Hindsight
Storage	Local SQLite	Local PostgreSQL or Cloud
Dependencies	None	hindsight-client, daemon, LLM
Setup	One config line	Config + daemon + bank API
Retrieval	FTS5 + HRR algebra	Semantic + keyword + graph + temporal
Trust model	Explicit trust scoring	Observations + entity resolution
Best for	Local-only, zero-dependency	Rich structured memory, multi-agent

Pitfalls

• Holographic is local-only. No cloud sync, no multi-agent shared memory. Each profile is fully isolated.
• No automatic fact extraction. Unlike Hindsight (which extracts facts from conversation turns), Holographic relies on the agent explicitly using fact_store add. Set auto_extract: true to enable session-end extraction.
• Trust scoring requires feedback. Without fact_feedback calls, all facts stay at default_trust (0.5). The system doesn't self-correct without explicit feedback.
• FTS5, not semantic search. fact_store search uses SQLite FTS5 (full-text), not vector embeddings. Exact and near-exact matches work well; conceptual similarity does not.
• No daemon to manage. This is a feature, not a bug — but if you're used to checking daemon health, there's nothing to check. If memory isn't working, check hermes memory status and the SQLite file.

References

• references/hindsight-migration-checklist.md — Step-by-step migration from Hindsight to Holographic
• references/holographic-qdrant-sync.md — Design for syncing Holographic facts to the shared Qdrant memories collection across all profiles