Memory System for Open WebUI

A long-term memory system that learns from conversations and personalizes responses without requiring external APIs or tokens.

⚠️ Important Notices

🔒 Privacy & Data Sharing:

• User messages and stored memories are shared with your configured LLM for memory consolidation and retrieval
• If using remote embedding models (like OpenAI text-embedding-3-small), memories will also be sent to those external providers
• All data is processed through Open WebUI's built-in models using your existing configuration

💰 Cost & Model Requirements:

• The system uses complex prompts and sends relevant memories to the LLM, which increase token usage and costs
• Requires public models configured in OpenWebUI - you can use any public model ID from your instance
• Recommended cost-effective models: gpt-5-nano, gemini-2.5-flash-lite, qwen3-instruct, or your local LLMs

Core Features

Zero External Dependencies
Uses Open WebUI's built-in models (LLM and embeddings) — no API keys, no external services.

Intelligent Memory Consolidation
Automatically processes conversations in the background to create, update, or delete memories. The LLM analyzes context and decides when to store personal facts, enriching existing memories rather than creating duplicates.

Hybrid Memory Retrieval
Starts with fast semantic search, then switches to LLM-powered reranking only when needed. The system triggers LLM reranking automatically when candidate count exceeds 50% of max retrieval limit, optimizing for both speed and accuracy.

Smart Skip Detection
Avoids wasting resources on irrelevant messages through two-stage detection:

• Fast-path: Regex patterns catch technical content (code, logs, URLs, commands) instantly
• Semantic: Zero-shot classification identifies instructions, math, translations, and grammar requests

Categories automatically skipped: technical discussions, formatting requests, calculations, translation tasks, proofreading, and non-personal queries.

Multi-Layer Caching
Three specialized caches (embeddings, retrieval, memory) with LRU eviction keep responses fast while managing memory efficiently. Each user gets isolated cache storage.

Real-Time Status Updates
Emits progress messages during operations: memory retrieval progress, consolidation status, operation summaries — keeping users informed without overwhelming them.

Multilingual by Design
All prompts and logic work language-agnostically. Stores memories in English but processes any input language seamlessly.

Model Support

LLM Support
Tested with gemini-2.5-flash-lite, gpt-5-nano, and qwen3-instruct. Should work with any model that supports structured outputs.

Embedding Model Support
Uses OpenWebUI's configured embedding model (supports Ollama, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and local sentence-transformers). Configure embedding models through OpenWebUI's RAG settings. The memory system automatically uses whatever embedding backend you've configured in OpenWebUI.

How It Works

During Chat (Inlet)

1. Checks if message should be skipped (technical/instruction content)
2. Retrieves relevant memories using semantic search
3. Applies LLM reranking if candidate count is high
4. Injects top memories into context for personalized responses

After Response (Outlet)

1. Runs consolidation in background without blocking
2. Gathers candidate memories using relaxed similarity threshold
3. LLM generates operations (CREATE/UPDATE/DELETE)
4. Executes validated operations and clears affected caches

Configuration

Customize behavior through valves:

• model: LLM for consolidation and reranking. Set to "Default" to use the current chat model, or specify a model ID to use that specific model
• max_memories_returned: Context injection limit (default: 10)
• semantic_retrieval_threshold: Minimum similarity score (default: 0.5)
• llm_reranking_trigger_multiplier: When to activate LLM reranking (0.0 = disabled, default: 0.5 = 50%)
• skip_category_margin: Margin for skip detection classification (default: 0.20)
• status_emit_level: Status message verbosity - Basic or Detailed (default: Detailed)

Performance Optimizations

• Batched embedding generation for efficiency
• Normalized embeddings for faster similarity computation
• Cached embeddings prevent redundant API calls to OpenWebUI's embedding backend
• LRU eviction keeps memory footprint bounded
• Fast-path skip detection for instant filtering
• Selective LLM usage based on candidate count

Memory Quality

The system maintains high-quality memories through:

• Temporal tracking with date anchoring
• Entity enrichment (combining names with descriptions)
• Relationship completeness (never stores partial connections)
• Contextual grouping (related facts stored together)
• Historical preservation (superseded facts converted to past tense)