openclaw/docs/concepts/memory-builtin.md

doc-schema-version, summary, title, read_when

doc-schema-version	summary	title	read_when
1	The default SQLite-based memory backend with keyword, vector, and hybrid search	Builtin memory engine	You want to understand the default memory backend You want to configure embedding providers or hybrid search You are migrating from the removed QMD memory backend

The builtin engine is the default memory backend. It stores your memory index in a per-agent SQLite database and needs no extra dependencies to get started.

What it provides

• Keyword search via FTS5 full-text indexing (BM25 scoring).
• Vector search via embeddings from any supported provider.
• Hybrid search that combines both for best results.
• Deterministic ranking by relevance, recency, and write-time importance.
• Diversity-aware ordering with MMR enabled on hybrid results by default.
• Trusted trigger recall for bounded pre-reply context without a recall model.
• CJK support via trigram tokenization for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
• sqlite-vec acceleration for in-database vector queries (optional).

Native sqlite-vec queries run in a separate, read-only process so a slow query does not block the Gateway event loop. Cancelling a search terminates its query process; OpenClaw does not retry that native query on the Gateway thread.

Getting started

By default, the builtin engine uses OpenAI embeddings. If OPENAI_API_KEY or models.providers.openai.apiKey is already configured, vector search works with no extra memory config.

To set a provider explicitly:

{
  memory: {
    search: {
      provider: "openai",
    },
  },
}

Without an embedding provider, only keyword search is available.

To force local GGUF embeddings, install and configure the official llama.cpp provider, then point local.modelPath at a GGUF file:

openclaw plugins install @openclaw/llama-cpp-provider

{
  memory: {
    search: {
      provider: "local",
      fallback: "none",
      local: {
        modelPath: "~/.openclaw/models/llama.cpp/hf_ggml-org_embeddinggemma-300m-qat-Q8_0.gguf",
      },
    },
  },
}

Supported embedding providers

Provider	ID	Notes
Bedrock	bedrock	Uses the AWS credential chain
DeepInfra	deepinfra	Default: BAAI/bge-m3
Gemini	gemini	Supports multimodal (image + audio)
GitHub Copilot	github-copilot	Uses your Copilot subscription
LM Studio	lmstudio	Local/self-hosted
Local	local	OpenClaw-managed llama.cpp server
Mistral	mistral
Ollama	ollama	Local/self-hosted
OpenAI	openai	Default: text-embedding-3-small
OpenAI-compatible	openai-compatible	Generic /v1/embeddings endpoint
Voyage	voyage

Set memory.search.provider to switch away from OpenAI.

How indexing works

OpenClaw indexes MEMORY.md, an existing root USER.md, and memory/*.md into chunks (400 tokens with 80-token overlap by default) and stores them in a per-agent SQLite database. OpenClaw does not create USER.md automatically.

Each chunk can carry nullable importance and trigger metadata. Null values are neutral, so older indexes remain usable. Search combines hybrid relevance, recency decay, and importance before applying MMR diversity; trigger recall only injects curated or promoted-trusted entries.

Each indexed chunk also has SQLite-owned provenance: origin class (owner, agent, untrusted, or system), session kind, observation time, and an optional supersession key. This metadata is stored separately from Markdown so recalled prose cannot rewrite its own trust classification. Automatic session ingestion also records source-session origins for its staged entries, which support selective deletion after promotion. For coverage and limits, see Memory provenance and deletion.

• Index location: the owning agent database at ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/agent/openclaw-agent.sqlite
• Storage maintenance: SQLite WAL sidecars are bounded with periodic and shutdown checkpoints.
• File watching: changes to memory files trigger a debounced reindex (1.5s default).
• Auto-reindex: the index rebuilds automatically when the embedding provider, model, chunking config, configured sources, or scope change.
• Reindex on demand: openclaw memory index --force

Full reindexes build a replacement in a temporary database and publish the memory tables atomically. Concurrent searches and status reads keep using the published index; a failed rebuild leaves that index intact.

You can also index Markdown files outside the workspace with `memory.search.extraPaths`. See the [configuration reference](/reference/memory-config#additional-memory-paths).

Migrating from QMD

QMD has been removed; builtin is the only memory engine. After upgrading, run:

openclaw doctor --fix

Doctor removes the retired memory.backend, memory.qmd, and memory.search.qmd settings, including agent-scoped memory.search.qmd forms. It preserves QMD paths and extra collections as the corresponding memory.search.extraPaths entries, including { path, pattern } globs. When QMD session indexing was enabled, Doctor also enables builtin session indexing and adds sessions to memory.search.sources without enabling broader cross-conversation recall. Retained session-reset transcripts remain in the agent's sessions directory and are indexed from those original artifacts.

When Memory Core finds a retired per-agent QMD workspace under ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/qmd/, Doctor also offers to remove its derived indexes, model downloads, collection metadata, and session exports.

Canonical memory remains in MEMORY.md, USER.md, memory/*.md, and the migrated extra paths. Builtin indexes those same Markdown sources on its next sync. The cutover is lossless by construction: no canonical memory content is copied or deleted; only derived state is rebuilt.

Builtin now covers most QMD use cases with:

• hybrid BM25 and vector retrieval by default, followed by temporal decay, importance, and project affinity before MMR diversity,
• bounded lexical query expansion for conversational searches,
• string or { path, pattern } entries in memory.search.extraPaths, and
• optional image and audio indexing under extraPaths only.

QMD query mode's learned cross-encoder reranking and HyDE generation are not part of builtin memory. MMR reduces duplicate results but is not a learned relevance reranker. To replace QMD's in-process, zero-key GGUF embeddings, install the llama.cpp provider and set memory.search.provider: "local"; without an embedding provider, builtin uses BM25 keyword search only.

When to use

The builtin engine is the right choice for most users:

• Works out of the box with no extra dependencies.
• Handles keyword and vector search well.
• Supports all embedding providers.
• Hybrid search combines the best of both retrieval approaches.

The builtin engine can index directories outside the workspace with memory.search.extraPaths. It uses bounded lexical query expansion to improve conversational recall, but it does not provide a learned or model-based relevance reranking stage. Its MMR pass is deterministic and local.

Consider Honcho if you want cross-session memory with automatic user modeling.

Troubleshooting

Memory search disabled? Check openclaw memory status. If no provider is detected, set one explicitly or add an API key.

Local provider not detected? Run interactive llama.cpp setup once, confirm the local path exists, and run:

openclaw memory status --deep --agent main
openclaw memory index --force --agent main

Both standalone CLI commands and the Gateway use the same local provider id. Set memory.search.provider: "local" when you want local embeddings.

Stale results? Run openclaw memory index --force to rebuild. The watcher may miss changes in rare edge cases.

sqlite-vec not loading? OpenClaw falls back to in-process cosine similarity automatically. openclaw memory status --deep reports the local vector store separately from the embedding provider, so Vector store: unavailable points at sqlite-vec loading while Embeddings: unavailable points at provider/auth or model readiness. Check logs for the specific load error.

Configuration

For embedding provider setup, search result limits and thresholds, batch indexing, multimodal memory, sqlite-vec, extra paths, and all other config knobs, see the Memory configuration reference.

Related

• Memory overview
• Memory search
• Active memory