Show HN: MuninnDB – ACT-R decay and Hebbian memory for AI agents (github.com)

2 points by mjbonanno ↗ HN
Hi HN,

After building several AI agent systems, I kept running into the same frustration: memory layers that are either static vector stores or fragile prompt hacks. Retrieval is opaque, forgetting happens at the wrong time, and associations don’t form naturally.

So I threw away the two production memory systems I had and built something different. MuninnDB is a purpose-built cognitive memory database where memories (called engrams) are first-class citizens that:

- Strengthen with repeated co-activation (Hebbian learning) - Decay over time using a verbatim ACT-R formula - Automatically form bidirectional associations - Track their own Bayesian confidence - Return a full mathematical “Why” explanation on every retrieval

Everything runs as a single static Go binary (embedded Pebble LSM storage + HNSW + BM25). No external services, no Redis/Postgres/Pinecone, and no LLM in the hot path. One command (muninn init) auto-configures it with Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and any other MCP-compatible tool.

The core call is dead simple: Activate(context) returns ranked results + explainable scoring. Background workers handle learning and decay on every read.

GitHub: https://github.com/scrypster/muninndb Website + docs + install (one-liner): https://muninndb.com Quick 13-minute demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b29wl0ehrQI

It’s very early (alpha, ~10 days old), but already functional and I’m using it daily. Would love honest feedback or questions from anyone working on agent memory, long-term RAG, or cognitive architectures.

Thanks!

5 comments

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This is the project I just posted. Happy to dive into any details... the exact ACT-R decay formula, how the Hebbian graph updates in log space, the 6-phase Activate pipeline, or why I went with embedded Pebble. Fire away!
Brilliant Job! I think you have landed on fundamental concepts that will be core to Agents and AGI going forward. Congrats on a very impressive project, video, website, etc. I think this is going to be big!

Please consider writing an academic paper since that could help you reach many more top AI researchers, etc.

Interesting direction. Treating decay/confidence as engine-native primitives is closer to what multi-agent systems need than raw similarity search. One practical thing to watch in production: expose provenance + freshness semantics at query time so downstream agents can decide whether to trust, refresh, or ignore a recalled memory.
Currently using this with both cursorAI and alongside Claude CLI. Both integrations are running flawlessly and have boosted productivity exponentially. I love the direction you are going with this tool and so far absolutely would recommend to anyone looking to give their AI tooling the super-jet it's missing.