Conversational Memory

Every conversation is stored, searchable, and summarized — so the agent picks up exactly where it left off.

Architecture

Messages are dual-written to two stores:

• JSONL (source of truth) — Append-only log of all messages
• SQLite (query engine) — FTS5 full-text search index, derived from JSONL

The SQLite index can be deleted and rebuilt anytime from the JSONL source.

Rolling Summaries

LLM-generated conversation summaries update incrementally as conversations grow. These summaries are injected as highest-priority context on session start and after compaction.

This means the agent never starts cold — it always has the context of what was discussed before.

Full-Text Search

Search across all agent knowledge:

# CLI
instar memory search "deployment strategy"

# API
curl "localhost:4040/memory/search?q=deployment+strategy"

Search covers AGENT.md, USER.md, MEMORY.md, relationships, and conversation history.

Topic Context

# Get summary + recent messages for a topic
curl localhost:4040/topic/context/TOPIC_ID

# List all topic summaries
curl localhost:4040/topic/summary

# Trigger summary regeneration
curl -X POST localhost:4040/topic/summarize

Index Management

instar memory reindex   # Rebuild the search index
instar memory status    # Index stats