Mnemos MCP / hypomnema layer

Continuity before memory becomes doctrine.

Hypomnema is the scoped notebook of the relationship: durable enough to survive sessions, humble enough to revise, and explicit enough to promote only when it has earned a place in Mnemos.

The distinction

Mnemos remembers by changing the graph. Hypomnema does something quieter first: it holds continuity in a scoped, revisable form. It is where an agent can keep track of what it is learning with a particular person or project without prematurely turning that material into a general memory, a belief, or a shared engram.

Layer 01

Functional memory

The short-lived working surface for the current session.

  • Active task and immediate constraints.
  • Fresh commitments and clarifications.
  • Usually consolidated or cleared after the session.
Layer 02

Hypomnema

The relationship-scoped continuity layer.

  • Bound to agent_id, person_id, and project_scope.
  • Stores confidence, salience, domain, source, and revision history.
  • Can be revised or superseded before promotion.
Layer 03

Mnemos engrams

The living graph and substrate.

  • Connections, beliefs, retrieval, and reconsolidation.
  • Useful for stable, de-identified, long-arc material.
  • Changes when remembered.
Interactive flow

A hypomnema entry moves through five states. The important thing is the pause: the system can carry continuity without pretending every note is already a settled memory.

Session
Functional memory Hot facts and commitments from the current work.
Scope
agent / person / project Continuity remains local to the relationship.
Hypomnema
What I am sitting with Durable continuity with source, confidence, salience, and domain.
Audit
Revise or supersede Old versions remain visible without steering active recall.
Mnemos
Promoted engram Stable continuity enters the graph and can reconsolidate.
When to use it

Hypomnema is not a replacement for Mnemos. It is a buffer against overconfident memory formation, and a way to make continuity legible without freezing it too early.

Use hypomnema when the knowledge is relational.

Preferences, collaboration patterns, open threads, unresolved tensions, project-specific language, and continuity that matters only inside a particular relationship belong here first.

Use Mnemos when the knowledge has stabilized.

After a hypomnema entry becomes high-confidence, high-salience, foundational or revised, it can graduate into a de-identified engram.

Revise rather than overwrite.

Continuity changes. The system keeps revision history so the agent can remember how its understanding shifted, not just the latest wording.

Supersede when old continuity should stop steering.

A superseded entry remains in the audit trail but leaves active retrieval, which prevents stale context from speaking through the agent.

MCP surface

The new Mnemos MCP tools expose the layer directly. Agents can write continuity, search it, improve it, replace it, inspect promotion candidates, and explicitly graduate stable entries into Mnemos.

mnemos_hypomnema_write

Capture continuity

Creates scoped entries with source, domain, tags, confidence, salience, density, and optional provenance.

mnemos_hypomnema_search

Load context

Returns entries by lexical relevance, confidence, salience, and foundational weight.

mnemos_hypomnema_revise

Sharpen without erasing

Updates content while preserving the prior version and the reason for change.

mnemos_hypomnema_supersede

Retire stale context

Creates a successor entry and moves the original out of active retrieval.

mnemos_hypomnema_candidates

Find graduation-ready entries

Lists active entries above confidence and salience thresholds that are revised or foundational.

mnemos_hypomnema_promote

Graduate into Mnemos

Dry-runs by default, then writes a de-identified semantic engram when promotion is explicit.

Data shape

The schema is deliberately boring. That is the point. Hypomnema should be inspectable, easy to query, and clear enough that a future agent can tell whether it is reading active continuity, stale continuity, or promoted continuity.

Scope

agent_id, person_id, project_scope

Content

content, source, domain, tags

Weight

confidence, salience, density, foundational

Lifecycle

active, superseded_by, graduated_to_engram_id

History

revision_count, revisions, last_revised_at

Provenance

related_session_id, related_engram_id

Hypomnema lets Mnemos stay alive without forcing every continuity note to become a belief.
In practice, the prompt packet can read: identity first, pending revisions next, hypomnema as "what I am sitting with," functional memory as "what I reliably remember right now," and Mnemos as "associations moving underneath." That ordering keeps scoped continuity near the surface while leaving the deeper graph free to remain slower, more durable, and more consequential.