Prem Cortex: Human-Like Memory for Smarter Agents
Cortex is PremAI’s cognitive memory layer for AI agents. Unlike vector DBs, it provides human-like memory with short and long-term storage, smart collections, temporal intelligence, and evolving knowledge graphs, making agents context-aware and production ready.
Aishwarya Raghuwanshi
•
Aug 9, 2025
8 min read
Prem Cortex: human-like memory for AI agents.
Building AI agents without proper memory is like having a brilliant colleague with severe amnesia. They might give you great answers, but ask them about yesterday's conversation, and there is no remembrance.
Most vector databases treat memories like documents in a filing cabinet. No understanding of relationships or maintain awareness of chronological context. No intelligence about what belongs together. When applied at scale, your search for "security best practices" returns home security cameras mixed with OAuth2 implementations.
What is Cortex?
Cortex is a memory layer for agentic systems that mimics human cognition. Instead of being another vector database wrapper, it's a configurable tool that agents can tune for intelligent memory storage and retrieval.
Think of it as giving your agent a human-like memory with adjustable knobs:
Dual-tier Architecture
STM (Short-Term Memory): Fast, recent context with configurable capacity
LTM (Long-Term Memory): Persistent storage with relationship graphs
Background evolution that discovers connections automatically
Smart Collections
Auto-organizes memories by domain (work.programming vs personal.cooking)
Prevents the "everything is relevant" problem at scale
Context-aware query transformation per collection
Temporal Intelligence
Natural language date ranges ("last week", "yesterday")
Adjustable temporal_weight (0.0 = pure semantic, 1.0 = pure recency)
Auto-detects time-sensitive queries
Agent-Friendly API
Single interface with tunable parameters
Multi-user/session isolation built-in
Optional background processing for non-blocking responses
Quick Spin-Up (Agent Memory Tool)
How Cortex Works as an Agent Tool
Cortex provides agents with configurable memory operations through a simple API:
Behind the scenes, Cortex handles:
Parallel processing through STM (fast) and LTM (deep) paths
Smart categorization to prevent domain confusion
Automatic evolution to build relationship networks
Hybrid retrieval combining global and collection-aware search
Under the hood: Automatic evolution
When a new memory is added:
Candidate selection: Cortex pulls likely neighbors from LTM using semantic similarity, shared tags, and collection context
LLM decisioning: An LLM inspects the new memory + candidates and proposes actions with confidence scores
Strengthen or create links (typed: similar/supports/contradicts)
Update tags/metadata for neighbors
Merge if the new memory duplicates an existing one
Safety & thresholds: Actions apply only if confidence ≥ threshold; never references non‑existent IDs; runs in background if configured
Persistence: Relationship updates are stored alongside metadata and timestamps (RFC3339)
Example decision:
Smart Collections: Domain-Aware Intelligence
The killer feature that prevents the "everything matches" problem:
Collections form automatically when 10+ (configurable) memories share a pattern. Each collection develops its own query enhancement logic, making domain-specific searches incredibly precise.
Strengths: Built for Agentic Control
Parallel Search Optimization Agents can spawn multiple Cortex instances with different configurations to maximize search coverage:
Configurable Trade-offs Every knob is designed for agents to tune based on context:
Need speed? Disable smart collections, use STM only
Do you require deeper insights: Enable background processing, search LTM
Require greater accuracy: Enable collections, use domain-specific search
Multi-User Context Switching Built-in user/session isolation means agents can manage multiple conversations without cross-contamination.
Ecosystem Integration
LLMs: OpenAI and Ollama (OpenAI‑compatible). Use your own client key and endpoint.
Embeddings: OpenAI (
text-embedding-3-*,ada-002) or local SentenceTransformers (all-MiniLM-L6-v2,all-mpnet-base-v2)Vector DB: ChromaDB over HTTP for persistent LTM
Agents/Orchestration: Use directly from Python or wrap as tools in LangChain/your framework
Minimal LangChain Tool wiring:
Add these tools to your agent as usual
📉 Current Limitations
Latency Challenges Cortex prioritizes intelligence over speed. Compared to pure vector databases:
Smart collection discovery adds 2-8s overhead
LLM-powered categorization adds ~500ms per memory
Evolution processing can take 1-2s in synchronous mode
If you need <200ms retrieval consistently, Cortex might be too heavy. Consider disabling smart collections or using STM-only mode for latency-critical paths.
No Multimodal Support (Yet) Currently text-only. Image, audio, and video memory support is in active development and coming soon. For now, you'll need to store multimodal content references as text descriptions.
📊 Performance: Real Numbers
PremAI performance benchmarks across LLM scores, efficiency, and token usage.
On the LoCoMo10 benchmark (1,540 questions):
At ~3k tokens (Top‑K 15): 0.682 — near Mem0 (0.684) with fewer tokens
At ~4k tokens (Top‑K 20): 0.706 — higher than Mem0 (0.684) at similar budget
At ~4.5k tokens (Top‑K 25): 0.707 — maintains lead
Approaches full‑context: 0.731 at ~7k tokens (Top‑K 35); full‑context baseline (all turns) is 0.8266 at ~26k tokens
Latency: ~2–8s with Smart Collections; ~1.5–2s without
🔥 Why Build Agents with Cortex?
No More Memory Soup At scale, traditional vector search returns everything vaguely related. Cortex's collections ensure your agent's search for "deployment" finds DevOps memories, not "deployed to production" cooking recipes.
Temporal Awareness Built-In Agents can naturally handle "What did we discuss last Tuesday?" without complex date parsing. Cortex supports control over temporal intent and adjusting temporal weighting for retrieval scoring.
Evolving Knowledge Graphs Unlike static stores, memories form relationships. Your agent learns that "Sarah's debugging session" connects to "React performance issues" and "team architecture decisions."
Production-Ready Knobs
enable_background_processing: Choose between fast responses or complete evolutionstm_capacity: Tune conversation context window (10-200 memories)temporal_weight: Blend semantic and recency (0.0 to 1.0)enable_smart_collections: Toggle domain organization
Real-World Use Case: Engineering Team Assistant
After a month: 2,000+ memories organized into ~15 domain collections. Queries that would return 50+ results in flat search return 5-8 highly relevant ones.
Gotchas & Limitations
LLM Processing Overhead: Smart categorization needs ~500ms LLM calls. Disable when operating at high throughput.
Collection Threshold: Needs 10+ (configurable) similar memories before creating collections. Early queries are less precise.
Not a Database: Unsuitable for structured data, logs, or metrics. A database should be used for that purpose.
VectorDB Required: Needs external vector database server. Adds operational complexity.
Evolution Lag: Background processing means relationships appear eventually, not instantly.
Final Verdict: Memory That Actually Learns
Cortex isn't just another vector database wrapper - it's a cognitive memory layer that agents can tune for their specific needs. The combination of smart collections, temporal awareness, and automatic evolution solves real problems that flat storage can't touch.
✅ Ship it if:
Building agents that need to remember conversations over time
Dealing with 500+ memories across multiple domains
Need temporal queries as first-class citizens
Want memories that evolve and connect automatically
Can tolerate 2-10s latency for intelligent results
Require multi-user isolation
❌ Refrain from proceeding if:
Need consistent <200ms retrieval latency
Working with multimodal content (images/video)
Simple key-value storage is enough
Working with <100 memories
Can't have a vector DB
Storing structured/tabular data
The question isn't whether your agents need better memory - it's whether they need it yet.
🛠 Get Started:
GitHub: Prem Cortex on GitHub.
Built by: Prem



