The docs described a "drop-in" OpenClaw memory backend enabled with
`memory.backend = "clawhdf5"`. Checked against OpenClaw's source and
docs (v2026.2.26 through v2026.9.6): that config was never valid —
v2026.2-v2026.7 accepted only "builtin"/"qmd" and rejected unknown
keys, so a Gateway given it refuses to start, and v2026.8.1 (OpenClaw
2.0) removed the key. No plugin was ever built (no manifest, no
registration, no tools), nothing was tested against OpenClaw, the
linked github.com/redclawsystems/openclaw is a 404, and
@redclaw/clawhdf5 was never published.
Decision (2026-09-25): not pursuing an OpenClaw plugin for now; ZeroClaw
is the integration target.
- Remove openclaw-integration.md, openclaw-config.md and
migration-guide.md; add docs/openclaw.md: the status, what a memory
plugin needs against v2026.9.6 (plugins.slots.memory, manifest with
kind "memory", registerMemoryCapability / MemorySearchManager,
prebuilt native packages), and what this repo has as building blocks.
- README, QUICKSTART, USE_CASES, ROADMAP (Track 7 withdrawn), CLAUDE.md
and the `openclaw` module docs describe ClawhdfBackend as what it is:
a Markdown-oriented library backend, not an OpenClaw plugin. The
QUICKSTART example is corrected (the old one called a three-argument
create that does not exist) and states its limits.
- packages/clawhdf5-node: marked unpublished and broken, "private": true
so it cannot be published by accident; its bugs (snake_case vs
camelCase fields, wrong addon path, no way to store an embedding,
wrong WAL name) are recorded in docs/known-issues.md.
- Two broken rustdoc links fixed along the way.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
It enabled nothing — the agent layer is always built — yet the README,
QUICKSTART and USE_CASES told people to pass it. Removed, with those
snippets fixed: they now depend on the git repository (nothing is on
crates.io, so `version = "2.0"` never resolved) and USE_CASES no longer
presents the `float16` feature as half-precision storage (that is
MemoryConfig::float16, on by default for new stores).
Breaking for anyone passing `features = ["agent"]`: drop it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
The README had fallen behind v2.3.0-v2.7.0, and parts of it were not
true. Checked every claim against the code and BENCHMARKS.md:
- Three of the six Quick Start snippets no longer compiled (Agent
Memory, Consolidation, OpenClaw); all six now do.
- Hybrid search was described as RRF throughout. The default has been
weighted 0.4/0.6 fusion since v2.5.0; re-ranking and confidence
rejection run only in the OpenClaw backend.
- The `float16` feature does not halve embedding storage (the store
always writes f32), `--features agent` enables nothing, "Source
Isolation" is not wired in, and nothing backs "billion-scale" IVF-PQ.
- "Cryptographically verifiable" overstated an unkeyed, session-scoped
FNV-1a ledger; "Zero C dependencies" was false while zlib-ng was the
default deflate backend.
- Stale numbers: tests (1,650 -> 1,868), Rust badge (1.75 is below
edition 2024's floor), 6.5 KB/record on disk (BENCHMARKS.md: 1.7 KB),
consolidation and hybrid-search latency, and a feature-flag table
broken by a paragraph pasted into it.
- The file schema, module table and crate map now match the code.
Adds a "What's new (v2.2 -> v2.7)" section for collaborators, leading
with the silent Extensible Array read bug fixed in v2.7.0. Footer links
point at git.redclaw.dev. CLAUDE.md: clawhdf5-migrate is the SQLite
migration tool, and MemoryConfig::compression is off by default.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
`MemoryConfig::quantized_index` now defaults to `true`. It holds a
quarter of the index memory and, with the exact re-score, is faster at
equal recall on every configuration measured: 1.63x the queries per
second on x86-64 (AVX2) and 1.18x on a Raspberry Pi 5 (NEON SDOT), with
builds 1.8x and 2.3x faster. The one argument for keeping it off — that
int8 search was slower on ARM — did not survive being measured.
Existing stores do not change. A store written with v2.6.0 or later
keeps its persisted setting. One written before the setting existed has
no stored value, and it loads as `false` rather than as the new default,
so reopening it never changes how its index is held. That case is
guarded by a real store written with the v2.5.0 CLI, committed as
`tests/fixtures/store_v2_5_0.h5` (6.8 KB): the test asserts it reopens
with an f32 index and still searches, and it fails if the load default
is changed to `true`.
The CLI needed more than a new default. `create --quantized-index`
assigned its value straight into the config, so under the new default
every CLI-created store would have been forced back to f32 unless the
caller knew to ask for int8. It is replaced by `--f32-index`, which only
ever switches the default off; `--quantized-index` is still accepted,
hidden, as a no-op, and the two conflict.
The whole agent suite passes under the new default, including the
brute-force recall oracle, now running on int8 plus re-score without
being asked to.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
`MemoryConfig::quantized_index` stores the HNSW index's own copy of the
embeddings as i8 rather than f32. At 100k x 384 that takes the index from
266 to 123 MiB and the whole reopened store from 399 to 256 MiB — 2.72x
to 1.74x the raw vectors, the largest remaining item in the footprint.
Quantised distances are approximate and `ef` cannot compensate, because
the loss is in the distances rather than in the graph: recall@10 tops out
at 0.967 against f32's 0.9995 and does not move between ef=128 and
ef=256. The store already holds the exact embeddings, though, so when the
index is quantised the query path re-scores the candidate pool against
them before fusion. That restores recall (0.9940 vs 0.9945 at ef=64) and
costs about 13% of QPS.
Off by default: it trades query speed for memory and which side is worth
more depends on the deployment. The flag is persisted in `/meta`, so a
reopened store does not silently revert to four times the index memory,
and the sidecar graph is rehydrated into the configured storage.
Also on the CLI as `create --quantized-index`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <[email protected]>
Bump all workspace crates, the node package and pyproject to 2.2.0 and
finalize the changelog. The repository URL in every manifest pointed at a
GitHub location that does not resolve; use the real origin.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <[email protected]>
- README's "HDF5 Core I/O" table claimed 19ns/2,080µs labeled 308× (real ratio
~109,000×) and a 313ns zero-copy mmap figure — neither traced to any dated
benchmark in BENCHMARKS.md. Replaced the table wholesale with the existing
"vs libhdf5 Summary" figures, relabeled from "h5py/C HDF5" to "libhdf5"
(BENCHMARKS.md never benchmarks against h5py, only libhdf5 directly).
- Added two new Criterion benchmarks to close the coverage gaps that produced
the untraceable numbers: metadata_open_from_disk (I/O-inclusive, fair
clawhdf5-vs-libhdf5 file-open comparison) and metadata_parse_in_memory
(clawhdf5-only, explicitly labeled as excluding I/O) in h5bench_meta.rs;
read_zerocopy_mmap in h5bench_read.rs (forces real page-ins by summing
elements rather than just returning a slice length — the mmap path turns
out to be slower than a plain copy at these sizes, an honest, unflattering
but real result now documented instead of a fabricated 313ns).
- Re-ran the full existing benchmark suite plus the two new ones on a second,
independently administered machine (tank: Ryzen 7 7800X3D) to validate the
numbers before publishing them. 5 of 6 rows landed within ~15% of the
original i7-12650H figures; recorded both in BENCHMARKS.md's new
"Independent Validation" section. README now cites the tank numbers.
- Added a short top-of-file README callout naming both halves of the project
(general-purpose HDF5 library vs. agent memory layer) with links to
BENCHMARKS.md and the Crate Map, so a data-infra reader isn't 60% through
a memory-store pitch before finding the part relevant to them.
- Added one factual, no-names line noting benchmark numbers are being
validated in collaboration with HDF5 Group engineers.
- Fixed the same untraceable "2-300x faster than h5py/C HDF5" / "313 ns"
claims in docs/QUICKSTART.md, one click from the README's own "New here?"
link.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <[email protected]>
