honcho-integration

Honcho Integration Guide

What is Honcho

Honcho is an open source memory library for building stateful agents. It works with any model, framework, or architecture. You send Honcho the messages from your conversations, and custom reasoning models process them in the background — extracting premises, drawing conclusions, and building rich representations of each participant over time. Your agent can then query those representations on-demand ("What does this user care about?", "How technical is this person?") and get grounded, reasoned answers.

The key mental model: Peers are any participant — human or AI. Both are represented the same way. observe_me is a peer-level flag (PeerConfig) controlling whether Honcho forms a representation of that peer; typically you want Honcho to model your users (observe_me=True) but not anything with deterministic behavior (observe_me=False). observe_others is a separate per-peer SessionPeerConfig setting that controls whether that peer forms representations of the other participants in a session. Sessions scope conversations between peers. Messages are the raw data you feed in — Honcho reasons about them asynchronously and stores the results as the peer's representation. No messages means no reasoning means no memory.

Your agent accesses this memory through peer.chat(query) (ask a natural language question, get a reasoned answer — a few seconds of live reasoning) or session.context() (near-instant read of formatted history + representation). Prefer context() for per-turn grounding; use chat() when you need a reasoned answer.

Reference map

Follow the workflow below. Read a reference file only when you reach the step that needs it:

Integration Workflow

Follow these phases in order:

Phase 1: Codebase Exploration

Before asking the user anything, explore the codebase to understand:

1. Language & Framework: Is this Python or TypeScript? What frameworks are used (FastAPI, Express, Next.js, etc.)?
2. Existing AI/LLM code: Search for existing LLM integrations (OpenAI, Anthropic, LangChain, etc.)
3. Entity structure: Identify users, agents, bots, or other entities that interact
4. Session/conversation handling: How does the app currently manage conversations?
5. Message flow: Where are messages sent/received? What's the request/response cycle?

Use Glob and Grep to find:

• **/*.py or **/*.ts files with "openai", "anthropic", "llm", "chat", "message"
• User/session models or types
• API routes handling chat or conversation endpoints

Bot framework detected? If the codebase is built around an agent loop, tool registry, session manager, and message bus (e.g., nanobot, openclaw, picoclaw), read references/bot-frameworks.md for framework-specific integration guidance and check references/bot-frameworks/<framework>/ for concrete reference implementations.

Phase 2: Interview (REQUIRED)

After exploring the codebase, use the AskUserQuestion tool to clarify integration requirements. Ask these questions (adapt based on what you learned in Phase 1):

Question Set 1 - Entities & Peers

Ask about which entities should be Honcho peers:

• header: "Peers"
• question: "Which entities should Honcho track and build representations for?"
• options based on what you found (e.g., "End users only", "Users + AI assistant", "Users + multiple AI agents", "All participants including third-party services")
• Include a follow-up if they have multiple AI agents: should any AI peers be observed?

Question Set 2 - Integration Pattern

Ask how they want to use Honcho context (see references/agent-patterns.md for the implementation of each):

• header: "Pattern"
• question: "How should your AI access Honcho's user context?"
• options:
  • "Tool call (Recommended)" - "Agent queries Honcho on-demand via function calling"
  • "Pre-fetch" - "Fetch user context before each LLM call with predefined queries"
  • "context()" - "Include conversation history and representations in prompt"
  • "Multiple patterns" - "Combine approaches for different use cases"

Question Set 3 - Session Structure

Ask about conversation structure:

• header: "Sessions"
• question: "How should conversations map to Honcho sessions?"
• options based on their app (e.g., "One session per chat thread", "One session per user", "Multiple users per session (group chat)", "Custom session logic")

Question Set 4 - Specific Queries (if using pre-fetch pattern)

If they chose pre-fetch, ask what context matters:

• header: "Context"
• question: "What user context should be fetched for the AI?"
• multiSelect: true
• options: "Communication style", "Expertise level", "Goals/priorities", "Preferences", "Recent activity summary", "Custom queries"

Phase 3: Implementation

Based on interview responses, implement the integration:

1. Install the SDK (see Installation)
2. Create Honcho client initialization — references/core-patterns.md §1
3. Set up peer creation for identified entities — references/core-patterns.md §2–3
4. Implement the chosen integration pattern(s) — references/agent-patterns.md
5. Add message storage after exchanges — references/core-patterns.md §4
6. Update any existing conversation handlers

Phase 4: Verification

• If the Honcho CLI is available, run honcho doctor to confirm connectivity before testing the integration code
• Use honcho peer list and honcho peer chat to verify peers exist and the dialectic endpoint works independently of the integration
• Ensure all message exchanges are stored to Honcho
• Verify deterministic bot peers have observe_me=False; AI-assistant peers can keep observation on (it's fine to model them)
• Check that the workspace ID is consistent across the codebase
• Confirm environment variable for API key is documented

Before You Start

1. Check the latest SDK versions at https://honcho.dev/docs/changelog/introduction.md

   • Python SDK: honcho-ai
   • TypeScript SDK: @honcho-ai/sdk

2. Get an API key ask the user to get a Honcho API key from https://app.honcho.dev and add it to the environment.

3. Verify with the CLI (optional but recommended). If the user has the Honcho CLI installed (uv install honcho-cli), they can validate their setup before writing any integration code:

   honcho init          # persist API key + URL to ~/.honcho/config.json
   honcho doctor        # verify connectivity, config, workspace health
   honcho peer chat     # test the dialectic endpoint interactively

   This is the fastest way to confirm the API key and URL are correct before debugging SDK code.

Installation

Python (use uv)

uv add honcho-ai

TypeScript (use bun)

bun add @honcho-ai/sdk

The SDK is sync-by-default in Python (with an .aio async namespace) and async-only in TypeScript — match the client to your framework. Full sync/async guidance and the base client/peer/session/message code are in references/core-patterns.md.

Integration Checklist

When integrating Honcho into an existing codebase:

• Install SDK with uv add honcho-ai (Python) or bun add @honcho-ai/sdk (TypeScript)
• Set up HONCHO_API_KEY environment variable
• Initialize Honcho client with a single workspace ID
• Create peers for all entities (users AND AI assistants)
• Set observe_me=False for deterministic bot peers (optional for AI assistants — fine to leave observation on)
• Configure sessions with appropriate peer observation settings
• Choose integration pattern:
  • Tool call pattern for agentic systems
  • Pre-fetch pattern for simpler integrations
  • context() for conversation history
• Store messages after each exchange to build user models
• (Optional) Run honcho doctor to verify connectivity before testing integration code
• (Optional) Use honcho peer chat to test dialectic queries independently

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Multiple workspaces: Use ONE workspace per application
2. Forgetting AI peers: Create peers for AI assistants, not just users
3. Modeling bots: Set observe_me=False for deterministic bots (scripted output — nothing meaningful to model). For AI assistants it's fine to leave observation on; turning it off is an optional optimization when you only care about the user.
4. Not storing messages: Always call add_messages() to feed Honcho's reasoning engine
5. Blocking on processing: Messages are processed asynchronously — don't poll or wait for reasoning to complete before continuing

Resources

• Documentation (LLM-friendly index): https://honcho.dev/docs/llms.txt
• Latest SDK versions: https://honcho.dev/docs/changelog/introduction.md
• API Reference: https://honcho.dev/docs/v3/api-reference/introduction.md

Tip: append .md to any Honcho docs URL to fetch the raw Markdown version.