Honcho memory

Honcho adds AI-native memory to OpenClaw. It persists conversations to a dedicated service and builds user and agent models over time, giving your agent cross-session context that goes beyond workspace Markdown files.

What it provides

• Cross-session memory -- conversations are persisted after every turn, so context carries across session resets, compaction, and channel switches.
• User modeling -- Honcho maintains a profile for each user (preferences, facts, communication style) and for the agent (personality, learned behaviors).
• Semantic search -- search over observations from past conversations, not just the current session.
• Multi-agent awareness -- parent agents automatically track spawned sub-agents, with parents added as observers in child sessions.

Available tools

Honcho registers tools that the agent can use during conversation:

Data retrieval (fast, no LLM call):

Q&A (LLM-powered):

Getting started

Install the plugin and run setup:

bash
Copy
openclaw plugins install @honcho-ai/openclaw-honcho
openclaw honcho setup
openclaw gateway --force

The setup command prompts for your API credentials, writes the config, and optionally migrates existing workspace memory files.

Configuration

Settings live under

:

json5
Copy
{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      "openclaw-honcho": {
        config: {
          apiKey: "your-api-key", // omit for self-hosted
          workspaceId: "openclaw", // memory isolation
          baseUrl: "https://api.honcho.dev",
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

For self-hosted instances, point

to your local server (for example ) and omit the API key.

Migrating existing memory

If you have existing workspace memory files (

, , , , ), detects and offers to migrate them.

How it works

After every AI turn, the conversation is persisted to Honcho. Both user and agent messages are observed, allowing Honcho to build and refine its models over time.

During conversation, Honcho tools query the service in the

phase, injecting relevant context before the model sees the prompt. This ensures accurate turn boundaries and relevant recall.

Honcho vs builtin memory

Honcho and the builtin memory system can work together. When QMD is configured, additional tools become available for searching local Markdown files alongside Honcho's cross-session memory.

CLI commands

bash
Copy
openclaw honcho setup                        # Configure API key and migrate files
openclaw honcho status                       # Check connection status
openclaw honcho ask <question>               # Query Honcho about the user
openclaw honcho search <query> [-k N] [-d D] # Semantic search over memory

Further reading

• Plugin source code
• Honcho documentation
• Honcho OpenClaw integration guide
• Memory -- OpenClaw memory overview
• Context Engines -- how plugin context engines work

Related

• Memory overview
• Builtin memory engine
• QMD memory engine