SelMem

Selective reconstructive memory for an LLM entity.

An LLM maps context to the next token. A stack of unmodified facts maximises coverage, not deviation: more evidence, same average path. SelMem sculpts a particular past — forgotten, gilded, anchored — so two instances can diverge. The aim is a non-average, path-dependent continuation, not a taller log. Selection, reconstruction, sleep, identity.

Manifest: WHITEPAPER.md Knobs: PARAMETERS.md — exploratory, not fitted.

Zero crates. Rust 1.75. SQLite via system libsqlite3.

src/
  core/       model, profile, store
  encode/     intake, scoring, embed, affect, identity
  recall/     retrieve, narrator, http
  dream/      night, drift, singularite
  persist/    file, sqlite
  net/        api, httpx, ui
  engine.rs   the loop
  bin/        selmemd, selmem-chat

Loop

experience → interpret → identity paint → gate
        ↓                         ↑
   lived book + sealed archive    |
        ↓                         |
 remember / speak (meaning can move)
        ↓
      sleep
 weather · rewrite · merge · extinguish
 motif → belief → trait → who_am_i
        ↓
   next experience is already colored

The model never sees the archive. Only gist, core, schema, affect, fidelity, mood, living axioms.

Claire and Silas are not characters. They are two sensitivities (tender / austere) on the same corpus. After nights they are not the same past.

Build

Zero Cargo crates. Persistence is a vault, not the memory: the organ lives in RAM (MemoryStore); on save it is dumped, on open it is reloaded. The model never talks to the vault.

Two backends, same Snapshot (profile, mood, store):

IDs are {prefix}_{pid}_{n}. The counter is raised on load for both backends. Dropped events leave no archive. Orphans are pruned on sleep and SQLite load.

Link is dynamic. If ld cannot find -lsqlite3 (no -dev package):

mkdir -p /tmp/selmem-libs
ln -sfn /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 /tmp/selmem-libs/libsqlite3.so
export RUSTFLAGS="-L /tmp/selmem-libs"

./run.sh does that when needed, then execs cargo.

./run.sh test
./run.sh run --release --example compare
./run.sh run --release --example llm_night
./run.sh run --release --bin selmemd -- --help

Tests

Rust only. No Python suite.

./run.sh test
./run.sh test --test scenes

Run

./run.sh run --release --bin selmemd -- \
  --bind 0.0.0.0:7420 \
  --path claire.db \
  --name Claire \
  --profile tender \
  --token secret \
  --llm https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions \
  --model gpt-4o-mini \
  --api-key "$SELMEM_API_KEY"

UI: http://IP:7420/ — paste the token at the top, talk.
Local Ollama: --llm http://127.0.0.1:11434/v1/chat/completions --model llama3

Behind nginx:

location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7420; proxy_read_timeout 90s; }

export SELMEM_LLM=https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions
export SELMEM_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini
export SELMEM_API_KEY=sk-...
export SELMEM_EMBED=https://api.openai.com/v1/embeddings
export SELMEM_TOKEN=secret

No endpoint: RuleNarrator + hashed vectors. The organ still runs.

One thread per connection. /health and / do not take the memory lock. /turn is serialized on the organ (one writer). Auth is Authorization: Bearer only — not ?token=.

HTTP

Rules that hold

• Two books: lived narrative / archive. The model never reads the second.
• Two channels: self is sculpted, world is not.
• Forgetting by default. Encoding threshold.
• Unlabelled events get lexical affect (FR+EN), then identity, then optional LLM interpret on the live sentence.
• Living axioms color the next encoding before the gate.
• Cherished memories embellish. Recalled disgust amplifies. Neglected disgust extinguishes.
• Recall can shift meaning (valence under current mood), not only wording.
• Nearby episodes fuse into myth. Heavy anchors do not merge.
• Axioms climb: 2 traces → motif, 3+ → belief, aligned beliefs → trait. Lineage stays.
• Two profiles on the same corpus diverge. Fingerprint uses founders, traits, contradictions.
• Proxy for originality: reconstruction sticks less than the unmodified log; clones are not interchangeable; world facts survive (originality_is_path_dependent_not_a_taller_log).
• Persistence: .db (SQLite) or .selmem (flat file).

Rust API

let mut mem = SelectiveMemory::open("claire.db", EntityProfile::tender("Claire"))?;
mem.live_with(input);
let recalled = mem.remember("that evening");
let _ = mem.speak("do you remember?");
mem.sleep();
mem.who_am_i();
mem.lineage("loyalty");
singularity_distance(&fingerprint(&a), &fingerprint(&b));

What this is not

Not RAG. Not a vector database. Not a personality in a system prompt.
Not a neocortex and not a brain. An executive–autobiographical loop around a next-token transducer.
No local neural encoder ships in-tree: pass --embed if you have one.