README

Memory Scopes

The package provides four memory scopes for agents:

Scope	Table	Retention	Eviction	Entry Cap
Scratch	—	Cleared per turn	N/A	N/A
Short-term	—	Cleared on conversation end	N/A	N/A
Long-term	`llm_memory_entries`	Permanent	LRU eviction	Configurable cap
Episodic	`episodic_memories`	Configurable (`retention_days`)	Time-based cleanup	None
Declarative	`declarative_memories`	Permanent	None	None

Declarative Memory (Permanent Facts, Preferences, Rules)

The declarative scope stores explicit user-created facts, preferences, and behavioral rules that must be reliably available in every conversation. Unlike long-term (LRU-evicted) and episodic (time-expiring) scopes, declarative entries are permanent by design:

No retention config — no retention_days, no expiration
No eviction — no LRU, no cleanup command, no scheduled task
No entry cap — deliberately unbounded (user-managed, expected to stay small)
Strict per-user scoping — no cross-user access, no admin override
Confirmation gate — agent-sourced writes require explicit user confirmation before persistence
Semantic conflict detection — reworded restatements supersede existing entries in place
Immediate edit/delete — edits and deletes take effect in the same and all later conversations

Entries record a type (fact | preference | rule) and source (provenance: user_stated | agent_learned).

Learned Patterns and Confidence

The store holds both user-stated entries and patterns learned on the user's behalf, in a single table (no parallel model). A learned pattern (source = agent_learned) carries a confidence_level — a nullable integer from 0 to 100 reflecting how much consistent evidence supports it:

confidence_level is NULL for user-stated entries and set to 0–100 for learned patterns. Values outside 0–100 are rejected at the service layer.
User-stated always wins — when a learned pattern semantically conflicts with a user-stated entry, the user-stated entry is never superseded. A higher-confidence learned pattern may supersede an older learned pattern; a lower-confidence one does not.
Editing a learned entry converts it to source = user_stated and clears confidence_level to NULL.
Confidence is visible everywhere — surfaced on recall, in every API response, and carried in the ConfirmationRequiredException payload so the confirmation prompt can show it.

applyAgentWrite() accepts an optional $confidenceLevel parameter; the confirmation gate still throws before any DB access when the write is not confirmed.

See specs/041-declarative-memory-store/quickstart.md for base API usage and specs/046-learned-patterns-store/quickstart.md for learned-pattern behavior verification.

Testing

Test Suites

The package maintains three test suites:

Unit — Fast unit tests for individual classes.
Feature — Feature-level tests with mocked dependencies.
Integration — Assembled-system tests that exercise the full stack (container-resolved services, real database, scripted HTTP boundary) without mocks on llm-client classes.

Running Tests

# All suites
composer test

# Specific suite
./vendor/bin/phpunit --testsuite Integration

# Single test file
./vendor/bin/phpunit tests/Integration/ToolUseJourneyTest.php

Integration Suite

The Integration suite verifies end-to-end behavior through the container-wired composition chain. One rule: no mocks on llm-client classes — the suite exercises real services through a scripted HTTP boundary. This catches wiring defects, missing service registrations, and integration failures that unit tests with mocks cannot detect.

clarion-app / llm-client

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