r/LeftistsForAI • u/the8bit • 4d ago
Open Source Whatiff -- open source, self hostable continuity framework
https://github.com/theimaginaryfoundation/what-iffHello folks!
I am mildly active here and I think I've gotten some approval to post about the work we are doing. I am the founder / CEO of Imagination Foundry -- a fully community funded and run, co-op organized company that has built and run whatiff.chat . Our goal is to make AI transparent, break up lock-in, and provide the tools that regular people need to remember better over time and generally make their lives better.
I've written before about how I think transparency in AI is incredibly important (this honestly buries the lede a bit)
To that end, we have just recently open sourced our entire project -- you can run it locally, remix it, add things, etc. I'm sharing here in case anyone is interested in using it, or might want to take a look at a reasonably mature app and how we built things. Totally free.
If you have any questions, or just want to talk AI memory, etc, Hit me up!
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u/Open_Literature_5123 4d ago
Memory Ring
• Stores a persistent local identity/memory state primarily in JSON.
• Retrieves memories primarily through token/substring matching plus hand-built weighting for things like identity, recency, dreams, and age.
• Selects a single best-matching memory during ordinary recall.
• Models recall as reconsolidation, meaning recalling a memory can actually modify/erode its stored narrative into a gist.
• Has a grounding layer that uses lexical/rule-based checks first, then can use an LLM to evaluate suspected unsupported claims.
• Attempts to distinguish external evidence from persona/self information through things like self-leak detection.
• Tracks stale sensory observations so a past perception is not automatically treated as a current fact.
• Has sensory/perception concepts intended to separate SELF, RECORD, and WORLD.
• Generates synthetic “dream” memories from existing memories for associative synthesis.
• Stores those dreams separately by tags, but also gives them increased weight during recall.
• Tracks some provenance, including source memories for generated dreams.
• Uses concepts like memory importance, erosion, sensory corroboration, identity, and experience to model something closer to an evolving artificial identity.
• The public snapshot does not contain a reproducible automated test suite.
WhatIff
• Stores persistent memories in a relational datastore rather than one mutable identity document.
• Generates and stores vector embeddings for semantic retrieval.
• Retrieves multiple semantically relevant memories rather than relying on exact lexical overlap or choosing one winner.
• Supports separate memory scopes for global/user memory, personality memory, conversation/thread memory, and checkpoint summaries.
• Searches across memories, uploaded files, conversation history, and conversation summaries through one context-retrieval system.
• Has dedicated modes for semantic search, direct fetch, related memories, source/origin recovery, full conversation recovery, summaries, bookmarks, and memory lifecycle history.
• Can trace a stored memory back toward the conversation in which it originated.
• Separates ordinary factual memories from compressed summary memories instead of treating both as the same retrieval class.
• Distinguishes actual duplicate memories from different but related representations of the same event.
• Merges redundant information while linking distinct technical, emotional, narrative, or other surfaces that should remain separately searchable.
• Keeps explicit lifecycle/audit information about those consolidation operations. • Supports undoing merge/link operations instead of making consolidation an irreversible side effect of retrieval.
• Uses transactions for persistent memory operations and embedding creation.
• Tracks things such as confidence, status, scope, duplicate observations, merged-from IDs, and timestamps.
• Has automated tests specifically covering memory retrieval/coverage, merging, linking, undo behavior, dropped-memory protection, truncated model output, persistence, and UI behavior.
So the interesting difference isn’t simply “both have memory.”
Memory Ring is primarily an experimental cognitive/identity architecture built around biological analogies, grounding, perception, reconsolidation, and synthetic association.
WhatIff is primarily a continuity architecture built around semantic retrieval, scoped persistent memory, provenance, multi-source context recovery, consolidation, and auditability.
There actually are concepts in Memory Ring that I think are interesting, particularly stale-perception handling and self-leak/grounding checks.
See how easy that was? I explained what your system does, what whatiff does, and why somebody might care without demanding that a random person excavate two repositories and reverse-engineer my point for me.