---
title: "Honcho"
description: "Go beyond memory to agents with actual social intelligence"
icon: "brain"
sidebarTitle: "Overview"
---

When building agents developers often run into the same walls:

> "My agent forgets everything between chats"

You need memory: session management, message storage, context handling. It's table stakes, but surprisingly complex to get right.

> "My agent treats everyone exactly the same"

You need personalization: user modeling, preference learning, behavioral adaptation. Now you're building a [social cognition](../core-concepts/glossary#cognitive-science-terms) engine

> "I'm writing infrastructure instead of features"

You need Honcho

<img src="/images/agent_hierarchy.png" alt="Honcho's Hiearchy of Agents" />

Honcho delivers production-ready memory infrastructure from day one. Store
conversations, manage sessions, get perfectly formatted context for any LLM.
But here's the magic: while your agents are chatting, Honcho is learning. It
builds Theory of Mind models automatically, transforming raw conversations into
rich psychological understanding.

```python
# Start simple - just add messages
session.add_messages([alice.message("I learn best with examples")])

# Get powerful - query user psychology
insight = peer.chat("How should I explain this concept?")
# > "This user learns best through concrete examples..."
```

Your agents evolve from goldfish to counselor, on the same infrastructure. That's Honcho.

Designed for developers and agents alike:
- **Natural Language Queries**: Chat with Honcho in natural language via the [Dialectic API](../core-concepts/glossary#storage-%26-processing) and let agents backchannel
- **Automatic Context Management**: Smart summarization that respects token limits
- **Native multi-agent support**: Break out of User/Assistant Paradigms and build complex multi-agent systems
- **Agent-first interfaces**: MCP connections and APIs designed for agents to consume and use as tools
- **Provider Agnostic**: Works with any LLM or Agent Framework

## How It Works

Honcho operates through two integrated layers:

<img src="/images/basic_honcho_flowchart.png" alt="Basic Honcho Flowchart" />

**Memory Layer**: Captures all user interactions - messages, preferences, and
behavioral patterns - in a user-centric data model that scales from individual
conversations to complex multi-agent scenarios. This also queues up messages for the insights layer to process.

**Insights Layer**: Continuously analyzes stored interactions to build
psychological profiles using [theory of mind](glossary#theory-of-mind)
inference, extracting patterns about communication style, decision-making
preferences, and mental models.

Agents access this understanding through the [dialectic
endpoint](../core-concepts/architecture#dialectic-api) - a natural language API
where they can ask specific questions about users and receive actionable
insights.

Example Queries
- "What's the best way to explain technical concepts to this user?"
- "Is this user more task-oriented or relationship-oriented?"
- "What time of day is this user most engaged?"
- "How does this user prefer to receive feedback?"
- "What are this user's core values based on our conversations?"

## Ideal For

**Personalized AI assistants** that need to understand individual psychology, not just remember conversations.

**Customer-facing agents** that must adapt their approach based on user communication preferences and emotional context.

**Multi-agent systems** where AI needs to understand human collaborators' working styles and decision-making patterns.

**NPCs** where you want autonomous agents with a rich and deep personality that isn't the average sycophantic llm

## Getting Started

Ready to integrate Honcho into your application?

<CardGroup cols={2}> <Card title="Quick Start Guide" icon="rocket"
href="/v2/documentation/introduction/quickstart"> Get up and running with
Honcho in minutes </Card> <Card title="Core Concepts" icon="brain"
href="/v2/documentation/core-concepts/glossary"> Understand Honcho's
fundamental concepts </Card> </CardGroup>

## Community & Support

- **GitHub**: [plastic-labs/honcho](https://github.com/plastic-labs/honcho)
- **Discord**: [Join our community](http://discord.gg/plasticlabs)
- **Issues**: Report bugs and request features on GitHub