Enable memory

hal0’s memory subsystem is off by default. When enabled it gives agents a persistent recall store (Hindsight by default) plus an optional knowledge-graph extraction layer. Enabling it is a single environment flag — no code change, no reinstall.

Turn it on

Set the flag. Add HAL0_MEMORY_ENABLED=1 to /etc/hal0/api.env:
Terminal window
```
echo 'HAL0_MEMORY_ENABLED=1' | sudo tee -a /etc/hal0/api.env
```
Restart the API so create_app constructs the memory provider:
Terminal window
```
sudo systemctl restart hal0-api
```
Confirm it’s wired. The graph status endpoint now responds with real state instead of degrading:
Terminal window
```
hal0 memory graph status
```

When the flag is set, hal0 builds the memory provider from your config. The default engine is Hindsight; if the Hindsight service is unreachable at startup, hal0 logs a warning and degrades to a local pgvector-backed provider rather than failing startup.

The graph-extraction gate

Storing recall items is one thing; running an LLM over them to extract a knowledge graph is heavier and separately gated. Control it with the hal0 memory graph sub-app (a thin client over /api/memory/graph).

Memory view showing live graph extraction status and counters Live memory and graph-extraction dashboard in hal0.

hal0 memory graph status
hal0 memory graph status --json

Shows whether extraction is on, the dispatch route, the configured upstream, and counters (builds OK, errors, in-flight, last build / error).

# extract via a configured external upstream
hal0 memory graph enable --route upstream \
  --provider openrouter --model anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet

# or route to a local slot
hal0 memory graph enable --route primary
hal0 memory graph enable --route agent

--route is one of upstream, primary, or agent. When --route=upstream, both --provider and --model are required (the server enforces this too, so scripts hitting the API directly get the same validation).

hal0 memory graph disable

Turns extraction off and cancels any in-flight build.

Migrate a legacy store

If you previously ran the Cognee-backed memory store, preview a migration into Hindsight banks:

hal0 memory migrate --dry-run
hal0 memory migrate --dry-run --cognee-dir /var/lib/hal0/memory/cognee

The report shows rows total / mapped / unmapped and whether it’s a no-op.

Run agents — agents are the main consumer of the memory store.
Connect external providers — set up the upstream you route graph extraction through.