memex-ingest
Brings a source into the vault as a traceable source note.
Writes sources/ — full or lightly-cleaned input.
Why every later claim can be traced to where it came from.
OpenClaw gives the agent hands. MemexLab gives it a governed long-term mind — a markdown-native vault the agent operates through explicit skills, under schemas, evals, and a public/private boundary.
# skills the agent invokes over the vault
memex-ingest <source> → sources/ (immutable, with provenance)
memex-markdown <item> → items/ (atomic, linked, cited)
memex-query "<question>" → cited answer
memex-brief "<topic>" → brief / memo
memex-evaluate → quality report (retrieval · citations · dedup)
# writes are dry-run; a human approves; the private vault is never published
The split
OpenClaw provides the agent runtime and assistant surface — tools, context, and the ability to act. MemexLab provides the durable knowledge layer those actions read from and write back to: a plain-markdown vault that can be inspected, cited, evaluated, and governed. The agent doesn't accumulate memory in a chat log or an opaque index — it maintains files you own.
This is harness engineering applied to memory: reliability comes from the scaffolding — schemas, skills, evals, verification, governance — not the model. The model is swappable (Anthropic, OpenAI, …); the harness is what compounds.
Preview
OpenClaw skill packaging is experimental in 0.2.0-harness-preview. The
skills below are described at the product level; concrete packaging and runtime
bindings are being validated and may change before a stable release.
The skills
Each skill is a named, reviewable operation over the vault. It reads from immutable sources and the markdown layer, writes a schema-shaped artifact, and leaves a trail.
Brings a source into the vault as a traceable source note.
Writes sources/ — full or lightly-cleaned input.
Why every later claim can be traced to where it came from.
Maintains the canonical markdown layer — atomic items with valid frontmatter and links.
Writes items/ — one thesis or idea per note.
Why knowledge stays human-readable, diffable, and re-linkable.
Answers a question by retrieving over the vault and citing what it used.
Returns a cited answer (source paths + entity slugs).
Why answers are auditable and can be filed back to compound.
Synthesizes a brief or memo on a topic from the canonical layer.
Returns a structured brief that links to its sources.
Why a position is assembled from evidence, not re-derived.
Runs the eval query-set and rubric over the vault.
Returns a quality report — retrieval, citations, dedup, contradictions.
Why quality is measured over time, not assumed.
Entity schemas define valid artifacts; eval sets + a rubric define "good."
Where in the memex engine repo (e.g. schemas/entity.schema.json, evals/) — separate from this site, not yet public.
Why the agent's output is validatable, not vibes.
Agent quick-start
Preview The MemexLab skills, schemas, evals, and governance live in the memex engine/framework repo, which is separate from this site and not yet public. The steps below describe the intended interface.
MemexLab's skills run inside an OpenClaw agent — a personal AI assistant runtime (MIT-licensed; Node 24 recommended, 22.19+ supported). Install it from npm and onboard:
npm install -g openclaw@latest # or: pnpm add -g openclaw@latest
openclaw onboard --install-daemon
We link to OpenClaw rather than bundling it — see the official repo for current install steps and version support.
Place the MemexLab skills in your agent's skills directory so the OpenClaw runtime can discover memex-ingest, memex-markdown, memex-query, memex-brief, and memex-evaluate.
Set the vault path (e.g. ~/Documents/Obsidian/<your-vault>/). Keep your real private vault separate from the public framework — the boundary is enforced by governance.
The agent runs skills: memex-ingest a source, memex-query a question, memex-brief a topic. Retrieval is deterministic; answers cite their sources.
Writes are dry-run by default. A human reviews the proposed changes and approves — nothing is committed or published unsupervised.
Run memex-evaluate to check quality, then file useful answers back into the vault so knowledge compounds instead of being re-derived.
Governance for agents
Agent actions are bounded by a declarative policy (governance.yml, defined
in the memex engine repo), so an autonomous tool can't quietly leak or
overwrite what matters.
The framework is public-ready; private vault data is never published. The boundary is explicit, not implied.
Skills may write only to allowed framework paths. Protected private paths are off-limits to agent writes.
Credentials, customer records, board materials, and personal contact details are blocked from crossing the boundary.
Writes are dry-run by default; a human reviews and approves. The agent is a force multiplier, not an unsupervised actor.
Validation runs before any push, so malformed or unciteable artifacts don't enter the record.
Important claims carry source paths, dates, and confidence — the agent must cite.
MemexLab is GARL-ready: agent-authored changes can carry signed GARL Protocol receipts, so the provenance of an agent's commits is cryptographically checkable. (Receipt signing activates once the project is registered on GARL.)
Honest scope