Sleep & Dreams

Sleep is abmind's background maintenance cycle — it processes raw conversations into structured knowledge, consolidates old memories, and detects contradictions.

When It Runs

Configured via BED_TIME and WAKE_TIME in .env.memory. The bridge triggers sleep automatically during quiet hours. Can also be triggered manually:

abmind sleep --level normal    # CLI
/sleep now                     # from chat

Sleep Levels

Level	Steps	LLM Calls	Duration
budget	Extract + consolidate only	~5	2-5 min
normal	Full cycle (extract, consolidate, contradictions, aging)	~15	5-15 min
ultimate	Deep analysis + skill review + retrospective	~30	15-30 min

Sleep Support by Product

Product	Max Level	Trigger	Notes
abTARS	ultimate	Automatic (BED_TIME + quiet ticks)	Full multi-step sleep with subagent (Dreamy). Optional hardware sleep after cycle. Dream report to user.
OpenClaw	basic	Cron (0 3 * * *) or manual	Single LLM call. Plugin registers sleep cron on gateway start.
Hermes-Agent	basic	Auto-registered cron (gateway) or session-end	Single LLM call. Plugin triggers budget sleep on session end if >24h stale.
Kiro CLI / Claude / Gemini / Codex	basic	Hook-triggered extraction (agent-driven)	Single LLM call via ABMIND_LLM_CMD. Or native (no LLM) if agent produces JSON during session.
MCP (standalone)	basic	System cron or manual	Single LLM call via ABMIND_LLM_CMD.

Why the difference: Only abTARS has a dedicated sleep subagent (Dreamy) with its own multi-turn session. All other products call abmind sleep as a single LLM call (basic level) — one prompt, one response, extract + consolidate in one shot.

What Sleep Does

1. Extract — pull facts, preferences, entities from unprocessed messages
2. Consolidate — merge daily notes into weekly, weekly into quarterly
3. Contradiction check — detect conflicting facts, mark older one as superseded
4. Aging — reduce relevance scores on stale memories
5. Skill review (ultimate only) — identify recurring patterns worth automating
6. Retrospective (ultimate only) — generate a "dream report" summarizing the day

Status

/sleep

Shows:

• 🧠 Sleep cycle running (step, %) — active
• 😴 Asleep (idle) — bedtime, nothing happening
• 👋 Awake — normal operation

Manual Control

Command	Effect
/sleep now	Start a fresh cycle on next heartbeat tick
/sleep resume	Retry failed steps from last cycle
/wakeup	Cancel hardware sleep, resume normal operation