Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables. Set them in ~/.abmind/config/.env.memory or export them before running abmind commands.

Paths

Variable	Default	Description
ABMIND_HOME	~/.abmind	Root directory for all abmind data
MEMORY_DIR	$ABMIND_HOME/memory	Directory containing memory.db and consolidation files
ABMIND_KEY_FILE	$ABMIND_HOME/secret/abmind.key	Encryption key for class-3 secrets

Memory

Variable	Default	Description
MEMORY_SEARCH_MODE	hybrid	Search mode: hybrid, fts, signature
MEMORY_MAX_DB_SIZE_MB	4096	DB size threshold — triggers aging acceleration warning
MEMORY_ORIGINAL_TTL_DAYS	90	Days before original-language content expires
MEMORY_ENGLISH_TTL_DAYS	14	Days before English translation expires (if original preserved)
MEMORY_AGING_ENABLED	true	Enable/disable automatic memory aging
MEMORY_IPC	1	Enable IPC notifications between processes (set 0 to disable)
MEMORY_BACKEND	sqlite	Storage backend (only sqlite currently supported)

Embeddings

Variable	Default	Description
EMBEDDING_ENABLED	false	Enable vector embeddings (requires Ollama or OpenAI)
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	ollama	Provider: ollama or openai
EMBEDDING_MODEL	nomic-embed-text	Model name for embedding generation
EMBEDDING_URL	http://localhost:11434	Ollama API endpoint
EMBEDDING_API_KEY	(empty)	API key (required for openai provider)
EMBEDDING_DIMENSIONS	768	Vector dimensions (must match model output)
EMBEDDING_SIMILARITY_THRESHOLD	0.5	Minimum cosine similarity for Se stage results (0.0–1.0)

Recall tuning

Variable	Default	Description
RECALL_DECAY_DAYS	365	Days until recency factor reaches floor
RECALL_DECAY_FLOOR	0.3	Minimum recency multiplier (0.0–1.0)
RECALL_EMOTION_BOOST	0.1	Emotion score multiplier for recency boost
SIGNATURE_BITS	256	Bit width for locality-sensitive hash signatures
RECALL_CONTEXT_HOUR_BOOST	0.02	Score boost for same time-of-day bucket
RECALL_CONTEXT_DOW_BOOST	0.015	Score boost for same day-of-week
RECALL_CONTEXT_TOPIC_BOOST	0.03	Score boost for matching conversation topic

ABM-L compression

Variable	Default	Description
ABML_VERSION	plain	Compression version: plain, v0, v1, v2
ABML_MIN_CHARS	100	Minimum content length to apply compression

Context tiers (#348)

Variable	Default	Description
CONTEXT_TIER_ENABLED	true	Enable three-tier context assembly
CONTEXT_TIER_TAIL	20	Number of recent messages in tail tier
CONTEXT_TIER_MIDDLE	50	Number of messages in middle tier
COMPACTION_LLM_ENABLED	false	Use LLM for context compaction (expensive)

Sleep cycle

Variable	Default	Description
SLEEP_QUALITY	(unset)	Sleep depth: basic, budget, normal, ultimate
SLEEP_TIMEOUT_MIN	55	Wall-clock timeout in minutes
SLEEP_MAX_LLM_CALLS	18	Maximum LLM calls per sleep cycle (hard cap: 50)
SLEEP_CURATION_DAY	sunday	Day of week for weekly curation tasks
SLEEP_MODEL_NAME	unknown	Model identifier for audit logging
AGENT_SLEEP_CTX_WINDOW	128000	Context window size for sleep LLM calls

Security

Variable	Default	Description
ABTARS_PASS	(unset)	Passphrase for secret encryption/decryption
ABMIND_USER	(unset)	Current user identity for multi-user isolation

File locations

~/.abmind/
├── config/
│   ├── .env.memory          ← env vars go here
│   └── users.json           ← multi-user config
├── memory/
│   ├── memory.db            ← SQLite database
│   ├── consolidation/
│   │   ├── daily/
│   │   ├── weekly/
│   │   └── quarterly/
│   ├── working/             ← daily transcript scratch
│   ├── sleep/               ← sleep audit logs
│   ├── core/                ← core identity templates
│   └── todo.md              ← persistent todo list
├── secret/
│   └── abmind.key           ← encryption key (chmod 600)
├── backups/                  ← encrypted backups
└── topics/                   ← topic knowledge files

Overriding for development

For testing or development, override paths:

export ABMIND_HOME=/tmp/abmind-test
export MEMORY_DIR=/tmp/abmind-test/memory
abmind install    # creates structure in /tmp

All env vars are parsed once at startup via getAbmindEnv(). Changes require process restart.