Memory gives an Agent the ability to recall relavant information. Memory is a part of the Agent’s context that helps it provide the best, most personalized response.

If the user tells the Agent they like to ski, then future responses can reference this information to provide a more personalized experience.

In Agno, Memory covers chat history, user preferences and any supplemental information about the task at hand. Agno supports 3 types of memory out of the box:

  1. Session Storage (chat history and session state): Session storage saves an Agent’s sessions in a database and enables Agents to have multi-turn conversations. Session storage also holds the session state, which is persisted across runs because it is saved to the database after each run. Session storage is a form of short-term memory called “Storage” in Agno.

  2. User Memories (user preferences): The Agent can store insights and facts about the user that it learns through conversation. This helps the agents personalize its response to the user it is interacting with. Think of this as adding “ChatGPT like memory” to your agent. This is called “Memory” in Agno.

  3. Session Summaries (chat summary): The Agent can store a condensed representations of the session, useful when chat histories gets too long. This is called “Summary” in Agno.

It is relatively easy to use your own memory implementation using Agent.context.

To become an expert in Agentic Memory, you need ot learn about:

  1. Default, built-in Memory
  2. Session Storage
  3. User Memories
  4. Session Summaries

​
Show me the code: Memory & Storage in Action

Here’s a simple but complete example of using Memory and Storage in an Agent.

memory_demo.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.memory.v2.db.sqlite import SqliteMemoryDb
from agno.memory.v2.memory import Memory
from agno.models.openai import OpenAIChat
from agno.storage.sqlite import SqliteStorage
from rich.pretty import pprint

# UserId for the memories
user_id = "ava"
# Database file for memory and storage
db_file = "tmp/agent.db"

# Initialize memory.v2
memory = Memory(
    # Use any model for creating memories
    model=OpenAIChat(id="gpt-4.1"),
    db=SqliteMemoryDb(table_name="user_memories", db_file=db_file),
)
# Initialize storage
storage = SqliteStorage(table_name="agent_sessions", db_file=db_file)

# Initialize Agent
memory_agent = Agent(
    model=OpenAIChat(id="gpt-4.1"),
    # Store memories in a database
    memory=memory,
    # Give the Agent the ability to update memories
    enable_agentic_memory=True,
    # OR - Run the MemoryManager after each response
    enable_user_memories=True,
    # Store the chat history in the database
    storage=storage,
    # Add the chat history to the messages
    add_history_to_messages=True,
    # Number of history runs
    num_history_runs=3,
    markdown=True,
)

memory.clear()
memory_agent.print_response(
    "My name is Ava and I like to ski.",
    user_id=user_id,
    stream=True,
    stream_intermediate_steps=True,
)
print("Memories about Ava:")
pprint(memory.get_user_memories(user_id=user_id))

memory_agent.print_response(
    "I live in san francisco, where should i move within a 4 hour drive?",
    user_id=user_id,
    stream=True,
    stream_intermediate_steps=True,
)
print("Memories about Ava:")
pprint(memory.get_user_memories(user_id=user_id))

​
Notes

  • enable_agentic_memory=True gives the Agent a tool to manage memories of the user, this tool passes the task to the MemoryManager class. You may also set enable_user_memories=True which always runs the MemoryManager after each user message.
  • add_history_to_messages=True adds the chat history to the messages sent to the Model, the num_history_runs determines how many runs to add.
  • read_chat_history=True adds a tool to the Agent that allows it to read chat history, as it may be larger than what’s included in the num_history_runs.

​
Default Memory

Every Agent comes with built-in memory which keeps track of the messages in the session i.e. the chat history.

You can access these messages using agent.get_messages_for_session().

We can give the Agent access to the chat history in the following ways:

  • We can set add_history_to_messages=True and num_history_runs=5 to add the messages from the last 5 runs automatically to every message sent to the agent.
  • We can set read_chat_history=True to provide a get_chat_history() tool to your agent allowing it to read any message in the entire chat history.
  • We recommend setting all 3: add_history_to_messages=True, num_history_runs=3 and read_chat_history=True for the best experience.
  • We can also set read_tool_call_history=True to provide a get_tool_call_history() tool to your agent allowing it to read tool calls in reverse chronological order.

The default memory is not persisted across execution cycles. So after the script finishes running, or the request is over, the built-in default memory is lost.

You can persist this memory in a database by adding a storage driver to the Agent.

1

Built-in memory example

agent_memory.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.google.gemini import Gemini
from rich.pretty import pprint

agent = Agent(
    model=Gemini(id="gemini-2.0-flash-exp"),
    # Set add_history_to_messages=true to add the previous chat history to the messages sent to the Model.
    add_history_to_messages=True,
    # Number of historical responses to add to the messages.
    num_history_responses=3,
    description="You are a helpful assistant that always responds in a polite, upbeat and positive manner.",
)

# -*- Create a run
agent.print_response("Share a 2 sentence horror story", stream=True)
# -*- Print the messages in the memory
pprint([m.model_dump(include={"role", "content"}) for m in agent.get_messages_for_session()])

# -*- Ask a follow up question that continues the conversation
agent.print_response("What was my first message?", stream=True)
# -*- Print the messages in the memory
pprint([m.model_dump(include={"role", "content"}) for m in agent.get_messages_for_session()])
2

Run the example

Install libraries

pip install google-genai agno

Export your key

export GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx

Run the example

python agent_memory.py

​
Session Storage

The built-in memory is only available during the current execution cycle. Once the script ends, or the request is over, the built-in memory is lost.

Storage help us save Agent sessions and state to a database or file.

Adding storage to an Agent is as simple as providing a storage driver and Agno handles the rest. You can use Sqlite, Postgres, Mongo or any other database you want.

Here’s a simple example that demostrates persistence across execution cycles:

storage.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai import OpenAIChat
from agno.storage.sqlite import SqliteStorage
from rich.pretty import pprint

agent = Agent(
    model=OpenAIChat(id="gpt-4o-mini"),
    # Fix the session id to continue the same session across execution cycles
    session_id="fixed_id_for_demo",
    storage=SqliteStorage(table_name="agent_sessions", db_file="tmp/data.db"),
    add_history_to_messages=True,
    num_history_runs=3,
)
agent.print_response("What was my last question?")
agent.print_response("What is the capital of France?")
agent.print_response("What was my last question?")
pprint(agent.get_messages_for_session())

The first time you run this, the answer to “What was my last question?” will not be available. But run it again and the Agent will able to answer properly. Because we have fixed the session id, the Agent will continue from the same session every time you run the script.

Read more in the storage section.

​
User Memories

Along with storing session history and state, Agents can also create user memories based on the conversation history.

To enable user memories, give your Agent a Memory object and set enable_agentic_memory=True.

Enabling agentic memory will also add all existing user memories to the agent’s system prompt.

1

User memory example

user_memory.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.memory.v2.db.sqlite import SqliteMemoryDb
from agno.memory.v2.memory import Memory
from agno.models.google.gemini import Gemini

memory_db = SqliteMemoryDb(table_name="memory", db_file="tmp/memory.db")
memory = Memory(db=memory_db)

john_doe_id = "john_doe@example.com"

agent = Agent(
    model=Gemini(id="gemini-2.0-flash-exp"),
    memory=memory,
    enable_agentic_memory=True,
)

# The agent can add new memories to the user's memory
agent.print_response(
    "My name is John Doe and I like to hike in the mountains on weekends.",
    stream=True,
    user_id=john_doe_id,
)

agent.print_response("What are my hobbies?", stream=True, user_id=john_doe_id)

# The agent can also remove all memories from the user's memory
agent.print_response(
    "Remove all existing memories of me. Completely clear the DB.",
    stream=True,
    user_id=john_doe_id,
)

agent.print_response(
    "My name is John Doe and I like to paint.", stream=True, user_id=john_doe_id
)

# The agent can remove specific memories from the user's memory
agent.print_response("Remove any memory of my name.", stream=True, user_id=john_doe_id)
2

Run the example

Install libraries

pip install google-genai agno

Export your key

export GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx

Run the example

python user_memory.py

User memories are stored in the Memory object and persisted in the SqliteMemoryDb to be used across multiple users and multiple sessions.

​
Session Summaries

To enable session summaries, set enable_session_summaries=True on the Agent.

1

Session summary example

session_summary.py
    from agno.agent import Agent
    from agno.memory.v2.db.sqlite import SqliteMemoryDb
    from agno.memory.v2.memory import Memory
    from agno.models.google.gemini import Gemini

    memory_db = SqliteMemoryDb(table_name="memory", db_file="tmp/memory.db")
    memory = Memory(db=memory_db)

    user_id = "jon_hamm@example.com"
    session_id = "1001"

    agent = Agent(
        model=Gemini(id="gemini-2.0-flash-exp"),
        memory=memory,
        enable_session_summaries=True,
    )

    agent.print_response(
        "What can you tell me about quantum computing?",
        stream=True,
        user_id=user_id,
        session_id=session_id,
    )

    agent.print_response(
        "I would also like to know about LLMs?",
        stream=True,
        user_id=user_id,
        session_id=session_id
    )

    session_summary = memory.get_session_summary(
        user_id=user_id, session_id=session_id
    )
    print(f"Session summary: {session_summary.summary}\n")
2

Run the example

Install libraries

pip install google-genai agno

Export your key

export GOOGLE_API_KEY=xxx

Run the example

python session_summary.py

​
Attributes

ParameterTypeDefaultDescription
memoryMemoryMemory()Agent’s memory object used for storing and retrieving information.
add_history_to_messagesboolFalseIf true, adds the chat history to the messages sent to the Model. Also known as add_chat_history_to_messages.
num_history_responsesint3Number of historical responses to add to the messages.
enable_user_memoriesboolFalseIf true, create and store personalized memories for the user.
enable_session_summariesboolFalseIf true, create and store session summaries.
enable_agentic_memoryboolFalseIf true, enables the agent to manage the user’s memory.

​
Developer Resources