pgmnemo — Strategic Charter

Status: ACTIVE | T0: 2026-04-29 | Project ID: 20 | Owner: product_owner (16) with founder veto on P0/P1 decisions

Vision

The default memory layer for any AI-agent system that already runs on PostgreSQL — installed with one SQL command, written and read entirely inside the database, owned end-to-end by the user. No separate service. No vendor lock-in. No data leaving the perimeter.

Mission

Ship an open-source PostgreSQL extension (pgmnemo) that gives multi-agent AI systems a durable, provenance-gated memory substrate without introducing a separate service, a SaaS dependency, or a proprietary lock-in. Be the pgvector of agent memory: small, pg-native, universal.

What we sell, in one sentence

pgmnemo is the multi-agent memory layer for teams that already trust their PostgreSQL.

What is unique

Competitors pgmnemo
Form factor separate service / SaaS CREATE EXTENSION pgmnemo;
Data location their cloud / their server your existing PostgreSQL
Trust gate on writes none provenance gate — write requires commit SHA or artifact hash
Multi-agent role isolation RLS or none first-class — role + project + provenance composite
Vendor lock-in yes (data egress, proprietary API) none (Apache-2.0, plain SQL)

The provenance gate is the wedge. Nobody else does it. Patentable. Defensible.

Target users (3 segments, ranked by wedge fit)

Segment 1 — Indie AI builders running multi-agent stacks (primary wedge)

  • Profile: 1–5 person teams, building AI agents on top of OpenAI / Claude / Ollama
  • Already on PostgreSQL (Supabase, Neon, self-host)
  • Pain: every agent framework ships its own memory abstraction, none of them durable, none of them auditable
  • Reach: HackerNews, dev.to, r/LocalLLaMA, r/MachineLearning, AI Engineer conferences

Segment 2 — Enterprise AI teams under data-sovereignty constraints

  • Profile: regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government); EU/RU sovereignty rules
  • Already on managed PostgreSQL (RDS, AWS Aurora, EDB, PostgresPro)
  • Pain: existing memory services (Pinecone, Zep, mem0) require data egress; legal team blocks
  • Reach: PostgresPro / EDB / Crunchy / Yandex Cloud channel partnerships

Segment 3 — Postgres extension ecosystem aficionados

  • Profile: people who already use pgvector, pgrouting, citus, timescaledb
  • Pain: love the extension model, want their AI memory in the same shape
  • Reach: PGConf, PgDay, FOSDEM PGDay, postgres-weekly newsletter

Differentiators (how we are not OpenBrain or Constructive)

  1. Extension form, not a service. OpenBrain is a service-with-MCP. We are SQL functions inside Postgres.
  2. Provenance gate. No competitor requires a verifiable artifact (commit SHA / file hash) before promoting a write to long-term storage. Without this, agent memory accumulates hallucinations.
  3. Universal AI provider compatibility. No coupling to OpenAI / Claude / any specific LLM. Bring your own embeddings.
  4. Apache-2.0 with patent grant. Not BSL, not FSL. Open-vendor friendly. PostgresPro/EDB can ship it bundled.
  5. Russian + global market. RU-language support first class (bge-m3 multilingual baseline, fallback). Constructive doesn’t, OpenBrain doesn’t.

Strategic sequence

T0 (now)         Internal-first: Agency v2 dogfoods pgmnemo as its memory layer
                 (BUILD-MEM-001 Phase 1 retargeted to extension form, not microservice)

T+6w             Extension MVP shippable internally: schema, retrieval, provenance gate,
                 acceptance gates met (recall@10 ≥ 0.55, install ≤ 5 min, footprint ≤ 50 MB,
                 zero external API calls on read)
                 Paper v0.3 submission-ready (PI + paper_writer)

T+8w             PAPER v0.3 submitted to ICSE-SEIP (paper-first condition)
                 Public GitHub repo created, Apache-2.0 LICENSE committed
                 README + 2 demo cases public

T+12w            STAGE 1 KILL GATE (StatAnalyst): if < 50 stars + 0 inquiries
                 + 0 prod deployments outside Agency → FREEZE

T+12w (success)  Variant 2 MCP server added; HN launch; conference CFP submissions
                 Approach Postgres-vendor partners (PostgresPro RU, EDB US)

T+24w            Decision: Variant 3 (Rust pgrx) or Variant 4 (Open-Core SaaS) or hold

Working Group conditions (from 2026-04-29 vote, 5-0-0)

These are mandatory gates. Any breach pauses the project until founder ack.

# Condition Owner Gate
1 PAPER v0.3 (Phase 1 measured) submitted on ICSE-SEIP before public GitHub release principal_investigator (77) + paper_writer (81) T+8w
2 License = Apache-2.0 with first-commit LICENSE file; CLA decision documented legal_advocate (74) T+1w
3 BUILD_MVP_EXT_PHASE1 plan contains: recall@10 ≥ 0.55 / install ≤ 5 min / footprint ≤ 50 MB / zero external API calls on read + competitive baseline vs OpenBrain technical_lead (5) + experiment_designer (84) T+1w
4 Kill criteria at T+12w public release: < 50 stars + 0 inquiries + 0 prod deployments → freeze statistical_analyst (79) T+12w

Hard prohibitions

  • Variant 3 (Rust+pgrx) does not enter implementation until pgrx-experienced engineer is hired
  • Two products in parallel forbidden — Agency v2 internal use is pgmnemo’s pilot user, not a separate track
  • License cannot be changed from Apache-2.0 retroactively without all-contributors CLA re-sign

Founder veto rule

All P0 and P1 strategic decisions require founder ack: - Public release date - License change - Pricing announcement - Pivot or kill recommendation from startup_mentor - Hire decisions (pgrx engineer, DevRel, legal counsel)

PO (assignee 16) executes operationally; founder retains chairman-level veto.

Org structure

Founder (Alex Gaydabura) — CEO/Chairman, P0/P1 veto holder
│
├── Product Owner (16) — operational PO, customer voice, roadmap
├── Startup Mentor (91) — biweekly venture-style review, brutally honest
│
├── Tech track
│   ├── Tech Lead (5) — owns shipping
│   ├── Chief Architect (86) — owns extension architecture
│   ├── Backend Developer (70) — implementation
│   └── QA (6) — testing
│
├── Research track (paper-first track)
│   ├── Research Supervisor (85)
│   ├── Principal Investigator (77)
│   ├── Paper Writer (81)
│   ├── Literature Scout (82)
│   ├── Experiment Designer (84)
│   ├── Statistical Analyst (79) — owns kill-criteria
│   └── Simulation Engineer (80)
│
├── Go-to-market track
│   ├── Growth Lead (92) — positioning, launch, content, DevRel, community
│   └── Legal Advocate (74) — license, CLA, patent
│
└── Process
    └── Process Guardian (78) — standards compliance

Core weekly involvement: PO, TL, PI, backend_dev, growth_lead, mentor. Gate-only involvement: rest.

Reference artifacts

  • Tactical plan (Month 1): TACTICAL_M1.md
  • Product plan: PRODUCT_PLAN.md (PO ownership; skeleton in repo, full version pending PO task 2118)
  • Repo bootstrap checklist: REPO_BOOTSTRAP_CHECKLIST.md
  • Research portfolio: research/ (frozen copies of pre-pivot research)
  • Competitive tracking: COMPETITIVE_TRACKING.md (growth_lead append-only)
  • Mentor reviews: MENTOR_REVIEW_<date>.md (biweekly)

Pre-pivot reference (frozen)

  • spec/v2/memory-svc/PAPER_DESIGN-MEM-001_v0.1.md — original architecture paper
  • spec/v2/memory-svc/ADR_001_SUBSTRATE.md, ADR_002_DATA_MODEL.md — substrate/data model decisions
  • spec/v2/memory-svc/SYNTHESIS_DESIGN-MEM-EXT_WG_RECOMMENDATION.md — pivot decision (HYBRID 5-0-0)
  • spec/reports/RETRO_F-A1-FIX-3_REGRESSION.md (addendum 2026-04-29) — ADR confirmations