Cognitive Memory

Memory Types

Inspired by cognitive science (Tulving’s taxonomy), YantrikDB supports four memory types:

Type	What it stores	Example
Episodic	Events, experiences with context	”User had a rough day at work on Feb 20”
Semantic	Facts, knowledge, abstractions	”User is a software engineer who likes AI”
Procedural	Strategies, behaviors, what worked	”User prefers concise answers with code examples”
Emotional	Valence-weighted memories	”Dog’s death → high emotional weight → never forget”

Memory Lifecycle

Every memory goes through a lifecycle:

1. Active — recently created or accessed, high importance
2. Warm — moderate age, decaying importance
3. Consolidation candidate — similar memories detected, ready to merge
4. Consolidated — merged with related memories into a summary
5. Archived — very old, low importance, compressed storage
6. Tombstoned — explicitly forgotten or superseded

Temporal Decay

Memories decay over time using a half-life model:

decay_score = importance * (0.5 ^ (elapsed / half_life))

• High-importance memories decay slowly (long half-life)
• Low-importance memories fade quickly
• Accessing a memory reinforces it (spaced repetition)
• Emotional valence modulates decay — emotionally significant memories persist longer

Consolidation

When multiple memories about the same topic accumulate, YantrikDB automatically:

1. Clusters similar memories by embedding similarity
2. Extracts a summary that captures the essential information
3. Creates a consolidated memory with higher importance
4. Tombstones the original fragments (preserving them for audit)

This mirrors how human memory works — individual episodes compress into general knowledge over time.

Contradiction Detection

When YantrikDB detects conflicting memories (e.g., “user works at Google” vs “user works at Meta”), it creates a conflict segment:

• Identity facts — flagged immediately (critical)
• Preferences — resolved naturally in conversation
• Temporal conflicts — prefer most recent, flag if uncertain
• Minor contradictions — keep both, resolve lazily

Conflicts are resolved conversationally, not programmatically — the AI asks the user.