🧠 NeuroWeave Timeline (NWT)

Process memory for AI agents and humans. NWT remembers how a project became what it is — not just what it is now.

Most tools remember results. NWT remembers evolution.

Traditional memory:  User → Context → Summary → Memory
Timeline memory:     User → Action  → Timeline Event → Evolution Graph

Every meaningful action in your project — a decision, a refactor, a file creation, a bug fix — becomes a node in a durable timeline. The links between nodes form an Evolution Graph that explains why the project looks the way it does today.

💬 What you can ask

AI agents reach the same answers over MCP — see MCP integration.

Related MCP server: Central Intelligence

🌱 Auto-grow: timeline from git commit

The single biggest reason NWT timelines are empty is friction. The v0.2 fix is a post-commit hook that logs an event on every commit — no human or agent typing required.

nwt init
nwt install-git-hook
git commit -m "Refactor retrieval layer" -m "Reason: lookup latency was high"
nwt: logged [12] Refactor retrieval layer

Add --strict to refuse events without a Reason: line, and --ai-command "claude -p" to let an external model fill the reason when the human didn't. See docs/git-hook.md.

🚀 30-second quick start

pip install -e .
cd your-project
nwt init
nwt log "Add activation engine" \
      --files activation.py \
      --reason "retrieval was slow"
nwt history
nwt graph

That's it. Storage is plain JSON under .nwt/. No database, no embeddings, no vendor lock-in, no daemon.

👀 A tour of the output

nwt history — what happened, in order

  [1] 2026-06-15  Project scaffolded  [setup, milestone]
      reason: Kickoff the MVP
      files:  pyproject.toml, README.md
  [2] 2026-06-15  Add memory engine  [core, milestone]
      reason: Need a place to put things
      files:  memory.py
  [3] 2026-06-15  Add activation spreading  [memory, optimization]
      reason: Retrieval was sequential and slow
      files:  activation.py, retriever.py
  [4] 2026-06-15  Add decay mechanism  [memory]
      reason: Stale nodes should fade
      files:  activation.py
  [5] 2026-06-15  Vectorize activation  [refactor, performance]
      reason: Loop was the hot path in profiling
      files:  activation.py

nwt graph — the evolution as a tree

○    1  Project scaffolded
│
│    2  Add memory engine
      ├─ sibling  → [   4] Add decay mechanism
      └─ extends  → [   3] Add activation spreading
│
│    3  Add activation spreading
│
│    5  Vectorize activation

nwt story — 100 events compressed to one page

# memory-engine-demo — evolution summary

span: 2026-06-15 → 2026-06-15  (5 events)

milestones:
  - 1  Project scaffolded          — Kickoff the MVP
  - 2  Add memory engine           — Need a place to put things
  - 3  Add activation spreading    — Retrieval was sequential and slow
  - 4  Add decay mechanism         — Stale nodes should fade
  - 5  Vectorize activation        — Loop was the hot path in profiling

spine file: activation.py

decisions (events with stated reasons):
  - [1] Project scaffolded: Kickoff the MVP
  - [2] Add memory engine: Need a place to put things
  ...

nwt explain activation.py — why a file exists

# activation.py
created in:  event 3
modified in: 4, 5

reason:
  Retrieval was sequential and slow

🆕 New features (v0.3)

Event importance

Events now have an importance field: low, normal (default), high, milestone.

nwt log "Fix login bug" --summary "..." --importance high
nwt log "Project launched" --summary "..." --importance milestone

The story command groups events by importance.

nwt diff — compare two events

nwt diff 1 5
# Output:
# Diff: [1] → [5]
# Events: 5 between these points
# Added: new_feature.py
# Modified: main.py

nwt compact — merge small events

When you have many small consecutive events with the same tags, compact them:

nwt compact
# Compacted: 50 → 35 events (merged 15)

Options:

• --time-window 3600 — group events within 1 hour (default)

• --min-group 3 — minimum group size to merge (default)

🧩 How it works

NWT lives in your project as a single .nwt/ directory:

your-project/
└── .nwt/
    ├── metadata.json       # project name, schema version
    ├── .counter.json       # next event id
    ├── timeline/           # one JSON file per event
    │   ├── 000001.json
    │   ├── 000002.json
    │   └── ...
    ├── relations/          # typed edges out of each source event
    ├── snapshots/          # reserved for v0.2
    └── indices/            # derived, rebuildable
        ├── files.json
        └── tags.json

Everything is JSON, atomically written. The whole workspace is grep-friendly and git diff-friendly. See docs/architecture.md for the rationale.

🔌 MCP integration

For agent developers — NWT ships an MCP server exposing the same answers as tools:

Wire it up in your MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nwt": {
      "command": "nwt-mcp",
      "env": { "NWT_ROOT": "/absolute/path/to/your/project" }
    }
  }
}

The server picks the workspace from $NWT_ROOT if set, else its own cwd. See docs/mcp.md for the recommended agent loop:

1. Session start: call get_project_story to load context.

2. For unfamiliar files: call explain_file rather than reading cold.

3. As work is done: call create_event with a reason explaining why.

4. When uncertain: call search_history with a hypothesis from the current code.

📦 安装

# from a clone (editable)
git clone https://github.com/Thatgfsj/neuroweave-timeline
cd neuroweave-timeline
pip install -e .

# from PyPI (coming soon)
pip install NWtimeline

需要 Python 3.10+。CLI 依赖于 click；MCP 服务器依赖于 mcp。两者都是自动安装的。

安装开发依赖（pytest）并运行测试套件：

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q

🗺️ Roadmap

v0.2 (this release) is the "auto-grow" cut: git hook integration, strict mode, file biography, and event templates. The timeline fills itself now.

• v0.3 — agent integration. Drive NWT through Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Agents to find the gaps.

• v0.4 — multi-agent collaboration history (concurrency-safe writes, per-author identity).

• v0.5 — NWC integration, only if NWT earns it on its own.

See docs/roadmap.md and docs/standalone.md for the full story.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and PRs are welcome. The whole project is ~1,500 lines of Python plus docs — easy to read end-to-end. Start with docs/architecture.md for the layout and CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow.

🔒 Security

NWT stores only what you give it, on disk, in your project's .nwt/. It does not phone home, does not read environment variables other than NWT_ROOT, and writes nowhere else. The .gitignore refuses to track tokens, keys, or .env files. See SECURITY.md for the full policy.

📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE.