Remember

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What is the remember operation

• Permanent memory: without session_id provided, remember() runs the full ingestion pipeline for you — normalizing your data, building the knowledge graph, and enriching it for retrieval, all in one call.
• Session memory: with session_id, remember() writes to the session cache for fast short-term memory. If self_improvement=True (the default), it then starts a background Improve pass to bridge that session content into the permanent graph.
• Dataset-aware: permanent memory is written into a named dataset, which defaults to main_dataset.

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Where remember fits

• Use remember() when you want the simplest way to get data into Cognee.
• Use it for raw text, files, file lists, and DataItem objects.
• Use session_id when you want fast conversational memory first and long-term graph sync second.
• Use self_improvement=False if you want to skip the follow-up improvement pass.

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What happens under the hood

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Permanent memory

1. Ingest — data is normalized and attached to a named dataset.
2. Build the graph — documents are chunked, entities and relationships are extracted, and embeddings are created.
3. Enrich — by default, Cognee runs a follow-up Improve pass that adds derived retrieval structures to the graph.

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Session memory

1. Store in session cache — the content is written to the cache keyed by user and session.
2. Return immediately — the call completes quickly with a session-stored result.
3. Optional background bridge — when self_improvement=True (default), Cognee immediately starts Improve in the background to sync that session into the permanent graph.
4. Manual bridge when disabled — when self_improvement=False, nothing is bridged automatically; the content stays in session cache until you explicitly run cognee.improve(dataset=..., session_ids=[...]).

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After remember finishes

• Permanent memory: your data is stored in a dataset, chunked, turned into graph structure, embedded for retrieval, and usually enriched with an immediate follow-up improve pass.
• Session memory: your data is available quickly through the session cache; it only becomes permanent graph memory if the improvement bridge runs.

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Examples and details

# Disable session caching
CACHING=false

# Or keep sessions enabled and use Redis
CACHING=true
CACHE_BACKEND=redis

result = await cognee.remember(
    "Einstein was born in Ulm.",
    run_in_background=True,
)

print(result)   # status='running'
await result
print(result)   # status='completed'

{
  "status": "completed",
  "dataset_name": "main_dataset",
  "dataset_id": "...",
  "pipeline_run_id": "...",
  "items_processed": 1,
  "elapsed_seconds": 4.2
}

{
  "status": "session_stored",
  "dataset_name": "main_dataset",
  "session_ids": ["chat_1"],
  "elapsed_seconds": 0.02
}

{
  "status": "running",
  "dataset_name": "main_dataset"
}