Hippo Memory

Make your agent's memory work like a brain. Hippo is long-term memory for coding agents.
Memories decay over time unless retrieved. Errors stick longer. Sleep consolidates.

At session start (MANDATORY)

Before doing any work, load relevant context:

hippo context --auto --budget 1500

Read the output. These are things the project has learned from past sessions.

When you learn something non-obvious

hippo remember "<the lesson in 1-2 sentences>" --tag <category>

When you hit an error or unexpected failure

hippo remember "<what failed, why, and how you fixed it>" --error

The --error flag doubles the half-life. Hard lessons don't fade quietly.

After completing work successfully

hippo outcome --good

If the recalled memories were irrelevant:

hippo outcome --bad

When stuck or hitting repeated errors

hippo recall "<what's going wrong>" --budget 2000 --why

When making an architectural decision

hippo decide "<decision>" --context "<why>"

Decisions get a recall boost so they surface when relevant, and stay active until superseded.

When migrating or replacing a tool

hippo invalidate "<old tool>" --reason "migrated to <new tool>"

Or let hippo learn --git detect it automatically from migration commits.

After significant coding sessions

hippo learn --git

This scans recent commits, auto-extracts lessons, and invalidates memories about replaced tools.

Export memories

hippo export memories.json
hippo export --format markdown memories.md

Check memory health

hippo status