How OceanDB memory works
The self-managing pass that turns a log into a wiki.
Ocean Labs
The Dreamer is what makes memory keep itself. Your agent captures entries all day; the Dreamer runs a deeper, periodic pass that consolidates them into clean, cited pages and draws the links between them. You never groom memory by hand — it tends itself while you sleep.
The Dreamer is the same de-fanged agent as capture: one tool, one statement at a time, read and add and update but never delete. It’s just running a different, more careful job.
Where it runs
The Dreamer runs client-side, from your own agent — the server holds no model of its own. You schedule it (nightly is typical, or on demand) and it reads its playbook and works through the phases against your memory. Because it runs as you, it sees exactly what you see, and nothing more.
The leash
The Dreamer acts on its own where the change is safe, and asks first where it isn’t:
- Reversible edits → it acts. Creating and updating pages, citing facts, linking what relates, marking things stale, tidying labels. These can always be undone, so it just does them.
- Structural changes → it proposes and waits. Archiving a page, resolving a contradiction, merging duplicates. These it raises as proposals for you to approve in the dashboard. Nothing structural happens behind your back.
Per workspace, one at a time
Memory in a shared space is tended by one member at a time. The Dreamer takes a short lease on each workspace before working it, holds it with a heartbeat, and releases it when done — so two members never dream the same space at once. It works each of your spaces in turn. See Workspaces.
How it never loses or repeats work
The Dreamer keeps a watermark per workspace and only processes entries newer than it. The watermark advances only after a clean run, with a small safety lag — so a late-arriving capture is re-read rather than skipped, and a re-run makes almost no new rows. It is, by design, safe to run again.
For the step-by-step, see The nightly playbook.