nousresearch/honcho

Honcho Memory for Hermes

Honcho provides AI-native cross-session user modeling. It learns who the user is across conversations and gives every Hermes profile its own peer identity while sharing a unified view of the user.

When to Use

• Setting up Honcho (cloud or self-hosted)
• Troubleshooting memory not working / peers not syncing
• Creating multi-profile setups where each agent has its own Honcho peer
• Tuning observation, recall, or write frequency settings
• Understanding what the 4 Honcho tools do and when to use them

Setup

Cloud (app.honcho.dev)

hermes honcho setup
# select "cloud", paste API key from https://app.honcho.dev

Self-hosted

hermes honcho setup
# select "local", enter base URL (e.g. http://localhost:8000)

See: https://docs.honcho.dev/v3/guides/integrations/hermes#running-honcho-locally-with-hermes

Verify

hermes honcho status    # shows resolved config, connection test, peer info

Architecture

Peers

Honcho models conversations as interactions between peers. Hermes creates two peers per session:

• User peer (peerName): represents the human. Honcho builds a user representation from observed messages.
• AI peer (aiPeer): represents this Hermes instance. Each profile gets its own AI peer so agents develop independent views.

Observation

Each peer has two observation toggles that control what Honcho learns from:

| Toggle | What it does | |--------|-------------| | observeMe | Peer's own messages are observed (builds self-representation) | | observeOthers | Other peers' messages are observed (builds cross-peer understanding) |

Default: all four toggles on (full bidirectional observation).

Configure per-peer in honcho.json:

{
  "observation": {
    "user": { "observeMe": true, "observeOthers": true },
    "ai":   { "observeMe": true, "observeOthers": true }
  }
}

Or use the shorthand presets:

| Preset | User | AI | Use case | |--------|------|----|----------| | "directional" (default) | me:on, others:on | me:on, others:on | Multi-agent, full memory | | "unified" | me:on, others:off | me:off, others:on | Single agent, user-only modeling |

Settings changed in the Honcho dashboard are synced back on session init -- server-side config wins over local defaults.

Sessions

Honcho sessions scope where messages and observations land. Strategy options:

| Strategy | Behavior | |----------|----------| | per-directory (default) | One session per working directory | | per-repo | One session per git repository root | | per-session | New Honcho session each Hermes run | | global | Single session across all directories |

Manual override: hermes honcho map my-project-name

Recall Modes

How the agent accesses Honcho memory:

| Mode | Auto-inject context? | Tools available? | Use case | |------|---------------------|-----------------|----------| | hybrid (default) | Yes | Yes | Agent decides when to use tools vs auto context | | context | Yes | No (hidden) | Minimal token cost, no tool calls | | tools | No | Yes | Agent controls all memory access explicitly |

Multi-Profile Setup

Each Hermes profile gets its own Honcho AI peer while sharing the same workspace (user context). This means:

• All profiles see the same user representation
• Each profile builds its own AI identity and observations
• Conclusions written by one profile are visible to others via the shared workspace

Create a profile with Honcho peer

hermes profile create coder --clone
# creates host block hermes.coder, AI peer "coder", inherits config from default

What --clone does for Honcho:

1. Creates a hermes.coder host block in honcho.json
2. Sets aiPeer: "coder" (the profile name)
3. Inherits workspace, peerName, writeFrequency, recallMode, etc. from default
4. Eagerly creates the peer in Honcho so it exists before first message

Backfill existing profiles

hermes honcho sync    # creates host blocks for all profiles that don't have one yet

Per-profile config

Override any setting in the host block:

{
  "hosts": {
    "hermes.coder": {
      "aiPeer": "coder",
      "recallMode": "tools",
      "observation": {
        "user": { "observeMe": true, "observeOthers": false },
        "ai": { "observeMe": true, "observeOthers": true }
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools

The agent has 4 Honcho tools (hidden in context recall mode):

honcho_profile

Quick factual snapshot of the user -- name, role, preferences, patterns. No LLM call, minimal cost. Use at conversation start or for fast lookups.

honcho_search

Semantic search over stored context. Returns raw excerpts ranked by relevance, no LLM synthesis. Default 800 tokens, max 2000. Use when you want specific past facts to reason over yourself.

honcho_context

Natural language question answered by Honcho's dialectic reasoning (LLM call on Honcho's backend). Higher cost, higher quality. Can query about user (default) or the AI peer.

honcho_conclude

Write a persistent fact about the user. Conclusions build the user's profile over time. Use when the user states a preference, corrects you, or shares something to remember.

Config Reference

Config file: $HERMES_HOME/honcho.json (profile-local) or ~/.honcho/config.json (global).

Key settings

| Key | Default | Description | |-----|---------|-------------| | apiKey | -- | API key (get one) | | baseUrl | -- | Base URL for self-hosted Honcho | | peerName | -- | User peer identity | | aiPeer | host key | AI peer identity | | workspace | host key | Shared workspace ID | | recallMode | hybrid | hybrid, context, or tools | | observation | all on | Per-peer observeMe/observeOthers booleans | | writeFrequency | async | async, turn, session, or integer N | | sessionStrategy | per-directory | per-directory, per-repo, per-session, global | | dialecticReasoningLevel | low | minimal, low, medium, high, max | | dialecticDynamic | true | Auto-bump reasoning by query length. false = fixed level | | messageMaxChars | 25000 | Max chars per message (chunked if exceeded) | | dialecticMaxInputChars | 10000 | Max chars for dialectic query input |

Cost-awareness (advanced, root config only)

| Key | Default | Description | |-----|---------|-------------| | injectionFrequency | every-turn | every-turn or first-turn | | contextCadence | 1 | Min turns between context API calls | | dialecticCadence | 1 | Min turns between dialectic API calls |

Troubleshooting

"Honcho not configured"

Run hermes honcho setup. Ensure memory.provider: honcho is in ~/.hermes/config.yaml.

Memory not persisting across sessions

Check hermes honcho status -- verify saveMessages: true and writeFrequency isn't session (which only writes on exit).

Profile not getting its own peer

Use --clone when creating: hermes profile create <name> --clone. For existing profiles: hermes honcho sync.

Observation changes in dashboard not reflected

Observation config is synced from the server on each session init. Start a new session after changing settings in the Honcho UI.

Messages truncated

Messages over messageMaxChars (default 25k) are automatically chunked with [continued] markers. If you're hitting this often, check if tool results or skill content is inflating message size.

CLI Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | hermes honcho setup | Interactive setup wizard (cloud/local, identity, observation, recall, sessions) | | hermes honcho status | Show resolved config, connection test, peer info for active profile | | hermes honcho enable | Enable Honcho for the active profile (creates host block if needed) | | hermes honcho disable | Disable Honcho for the active profile | | hermes honcho peer | Show or update peer names (--user <name>, --ai <name>, --reasoning <level>) | | hermes honcho peers | Show peer identities across all profiles | | hermes honcho mode | Show or set recall mode (hybrid, context, tools) | | hermes honcho tokens | Show or set token budgets (--context <N>, --dialectic <N>) | | hermes honcho sessions | List known directory-to-session-name mappings | | hermes honcho map <name> | Map current working directory to a Honcho session name | | hermes honcho identity | Seed AI peer identity or show both peer representations | | hermes honcho sync | Create host blocks for all Hermes profiles that don't have one yet | | hermes honcho migrate | Step-by-step migration guide from OpenClaw native memory to Hermes + Honcho | | hermes memory setup | Generic memory provider picker (selecting "honcho" runs the same wizard) | | hermes memory status | Show active memory provider and config | | hermes memory off | Disable external memory provider |