Amygdala Memory 🎭

Emotional processing for AI agents. Part of the AI Brain series.

Give your AI agent persistent emotional states that carry across sessions. Not just performing emotions — having them.

The Problem

Current AI agents:

• - ✅ Remember facts (with hippocampus)
• ❌ Don't have persistent emotional states
• ❌ Start each session emotionally "blank"
• ❌ Can describe emotions but don't feel differently

Memory without emotion is just a database. The amygdala adds weight — this made me happy, that frustrated me, this person brings warmth.

The Solution

Track five emotional dimensions that persist and decay over time:

Quick Start

1. Install

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This will:

• - Create memory/emotional-state.json with baseline values
• Generate AMYGDALA_STATE.md (auto-injected into sessions!)
• Set up cron for automatic decay every 6 hours

2. Check current state

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3. Log emotions

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4. Set up decay (optional cron)

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Scripts

Automatic Emotional Encoding (v1.5.0+)

The amygdala can now automatically detect and log emotions from your conversation history using an LLM-based pipeline:

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Set up automatic encoding (cron)

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This means your emotional state updates automatically based on what happens in conversations — no manual logging needed.

Visualization (v1.6.0+)

Terminal

HTML Dashboard (Unified Brain Dashboard)

Auto-detects installed brain skills and shows tabs:

• - 🎭 Emotions — Amygdala (always shown)
• 🧠 Memory — Hippocampus (if memory/index.json exists)
• ⭐ Drive — VTA (if memory/reward-state.json exists)

Avatar & Name: Reads from IDENTITY.md:
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The dashboard auto-regenerates on every cron run.

After Installation (for agents)

When you install this skill, notify the user about the dashboard:

🎭 Amygdala installed!
View your agent's emotional state in the Brain Dashboard:
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Auto-Injection (Zero Manual Steps!)

After install, AMYGDALA_STATE.md is created in your workspace root.

OpenClaw automatically injects all *.md files from workspace into session context. This means:

1. 1. New session starts
2. AMYGDALA_STATE.md is auto-loaded (no manual step!)
3. You see your emotional state in context
4. Responses are influenced by your mood

The file is regenerated whenever decay-emotion.sh runs (via cron every 6h).

Supported Emotions

When you log an emotion, it automatically adjusts the relevant dimensions:

Integration with OpenClaw

Add to session startup (AGENTS.md)

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Log emotions during conversation

When something emotionally significant happens:
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State File Format

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Decay Mechanics

Emotions naturally return to baseline over time:

• - Decay rate: 10% of distance to baseline per run
• Recommended schedule: Every 6 hours
• Effect: Strong emotions fade, but slowly

After 24 hours without updates, a valence of 0.8 would decay to ~0.65.

Event Logging

Track emotional activity over time for analytics:

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Events append to ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/brain-events.jsonl:
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Use for trend analysis — visualize emotional patterns over days/weeks.

AI Brain Series

Philosophy

Can an AI feel emotions, or only simulate them?

Our take: If emotional state influences behavior, and the system acts as if it feels... does the distinction matter? Functional emotions might be the only kind that exist for any system — biological or artificial.