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Where to start, depending on what you’re trying to do
  • “I just want to try Synap without installing anything”: open the live playground and exercise the SDK from your browser.
  • “I want to see Synap working in 10 minutes”: you’re on the right page. Stay here.
  • “I want to wire Synap into a real FastAPI / Flask / Next.js / Django app”: head to Setup & Integration after you finish this page.
  • “I want a complete end-to-end tutorial with an LLM, conversation routing, and graceful degradation”: go to First Integration. That tutorial assumes you’ve finished this Quickstart.
  • “I use a framework (LangChain, LangGraph, Vercel AI SDK, CrewAI, LiveKit, Claude Agent SDK, Pipecat…)”: you won’t call most of these APIs directly. Skim this page for the mental model, then jump to your integration.
Using an AI coding agent? Install the Synap coding-agent skill and just ask it to add Synap to your app: it knows the SDK and every framework integration. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and more.

The five identifiers, at a glance

Everything in Synap is scoped by these. You’ll see them throughout this page:
IdentifierWhat it is
InstanceAn agent you integrate with Maximem Synap (resolved from your API key, not passed per call).
User (user_id)The end user of your agent (B2B or B2C). Passed on most calls.
Customer (customer_id)(B2B only) one of your customer organizations. On B2C it is auto-resolved, so you omit it.
Conversation (conversation_id)One chat thread. Must be a valid UUID.
ClientYour own organization account, which contains your instances.
For the full model, see Identifiers & Scopes.

TL;DR: Hello World

If you already have an API key, this is everything you need to ingest one memory and read it back. This default is for a B2C app: one user (you), identified by user_id alone:
hello_synap.py
On a B2B instance, every user lives under a tenant, so each call also carries a customer_id. Pass it on both ingestion and retrieval:
See B2C vs B2B below to tell which kind of instance you have.
The rest of this page unfolds those few lines into a step-by-step walkthrough. Read it if this is your first time. Skip ahead to First Integration for the full agent loop with an LLM.

B2C vs B2B: which one are you?

Synap supports two tenancy shapes, and your Instance is set to exactly one of them via the User Relationship setting in the Dashboard (Instance Settings). This single choice decides whether customer_id is required on every call.
  • B2C (personal app): one tier of users, no tenant above them. You identify each user by user_id only. customer_id is auto-resolved server-side, so you never pass it. This is the right model when your agent’s users are individuals (a companion app, a personal assistant, your first hobby agent, one user: you).
  • B2B (multi-tenant): your customers are organizations, each containing many users. Every user is scoped under a customer_id, so you pass both user_id and customer_id on every call. Memories tagged at customer scope are shared across that tenant’s users; user-scoped memories stay private to the user.
How to tell which you have: open your Instance in the Dashboard and check User Relationship under Instance Settings. If it’s a personal/B2C relationship, omit customer_id (the examples in the main flow below). If it’s a B2B relationship, add customer_id to every call (the B2B accordions). When in doubt, the default for a brand-new personal agent is B2C. This page’s main walkthrough uses the B2C shape. Each step includes a B2B accordion showing the extra customer_id.

Prerequisites

1

Set Up Your Client

A Client is your organization’s top-level account in Synap. Every instance belongs to a Client. You have two options:Create a new Client
  1. Log in to the Synap Dashboard
  2. Click Create Client, enter your organization name, and confirm
Join an existing ClientIf your team already has a Synap account, ask your administrator to invite you. Once added, log in and you’ll see the shared Client and its instances in your Dashboard.
Skipping this step is not possible: every instance must belong to a Client. If you are unsure whether your organization already has one, check with your team before creating a new Client.
2

Create an Instance

An instance is an isolated memory environment for your agent. Each instance has its own storage, configuration, and scope hierarchy.
  1. In the Dashboard, navigate to Instances in the sidebar
  2. Click Create Instance
  3. Fill in the instance form:
    • Name (required): A human-readable label, e.g. "My First Agent"
    • Agent Type (optional): The kind of agent you’re building (e.g. B2B Customer Support, B2C Companion, Workflow Agent). It seeds a sensible starting memory configuration for that use case. Skip it and Synap applies a default; you shape memory more precisely with the Use-Case Markdown file below, which you can update any time.
    • Description (optional): A short description of what this instance is for
    • Use-Case Markdown (optional but recommended): Upload a .md file describing your agent’s use case (see below)
Creating a new instance in the Synap Dashboard

Use-Case Markdown

The Use-Case Markdown file tells Synap what your agent does, who it serves, and what it should remember. Synap uses it to generate an optimized Memory Architecture Configuration (MACA) for your instance, so the more detail you provide, the better your memory extraction and retrieval will be from day one.Click Download Template in the Create Instance form, fill in at least the three required sections (Agent Objective, Target Users, Task Examples), and upload the file (.md, .markdown, or .txt, max 512 KB) before clicking Create.For the full template and section-by-section guidance, see Writing a Use-Case Markdown File.
You can upload or update the use-case file at any time after instance creation via Instance Settings in the Dashboard. Synap will re-evaluate and update the MACA when a new file is submitted.
3

Generate an API Key

  1. In the Dashboard, go to your newly created instance
  2. Open the API Keys section on the instance detail page
  3. Click Generate API Key
  4. Give it a label (e.g., “development”) and click Generate
  5. Copy the key immediately: it starts with synap_
The API key is displayed only once. Copy it now and store it securely. If you lose it, revoke it from the dashboard and generate a new one.
4

Install the SDK

Now that you have a key, install the Synap SDK from PyPI:
Streaming is enabled by default: no extra install needed.
Verify the installation:
5

Initialize the SDK

Set your API key as an environment variable:
Create a new Python file:
main.py
That’s it. The SDK reads SYNAP_API_KEY from your environment automatically.
You can also pass the API key directly if you prefer:
Run the script:
You should see Synap SDK initialized successfully!
On Windows, python is sometimes intercepted by the Microsoft Store app execution alias and fails with "Python was not found". Use py (the Windows Python launcher) instead: it ships with every official Python installer. The same applies to pip: py -m pip install maximem-synap always works regardless of PATH configuration.
6

Ingest Your First Memory

Now let’s send a conversation to Synap. The ingestion pipeline will automatically extract structured knowledge: facts, preferences, entities, and more.
On a B2B instance, add customer_id to scope this user under a tenant:
The SDK returns immediately with an ingestion ID. The pipeline processes the content asynchronously, extracting:
  • Fact: User is located in San Francisco
  • Preference: User loves warm weather
  • Temporal event: User is planning a trip to Japan next month
  • Entities: San Francisco, Japan (resolved and linked in the knowledge graph)
Ingestion is asynchronous by design. The memories.create() call returns as soon as the content is accepted by Synap Cloud. Processing typically completes within a few seconds, but complex documents may take longer.
7

Retrieve Context

Once memories are ingested and processed, you can retrieve relevant context. Synap searches across both vector and graph storage, ranks results by relevance, and respects scope boundaries.
Match the retrieval interface to the scope you ingested at. Synap has three scope-specific retrieval methods, and a memory is only returned through the one that matches how it was tagged:
If you ingested with…Retrieve via…
user_id=... (B2C) or user_id=... + customer_id=... (B2B)sdk.user.context.fetch(user_id=...)
customer_id=... (no user)sdk.customer.context.fetch(customer_id=...)
A conversation registered via record_message(...)sdk.conversation.context.fetch(conversation_id=...)
A memory tagged with multiple identifiers is retrievable through any matching interface. A conversation is registered only by record_message(...); passing a conversation_id in memories.create(metadata=...) does not register it, because metadata is stored alongside the memory but is not indexed for scope resolution. Calling conversation.context.fetch with a brand-new, unregistered conversation_id returns empty results by design: there is no conversation row to anchor scope resolution. See Context Fetch for the full reference.
B2C vs B2B scoping. On B2C instances there is no customer dimension, so customer_id is auto-resolved from user_id and you omit it; that’s the example below. On B2B instances, memory is scoped to a (user_id, customer_id) pair, so when you fetch at user scope you must pass both identifiers; omitting customer_id raises an error.
The ingestion above used user_id="user_123", so retrieve at user scope (B2C, customer_id is auto-resolved):
On a B2B instance you ingested with customer_id="acme_corp", so pass both identifiers at user scope:
Example output:
You can now inject this context into your LLM’s system prompt or conversation history to create a personalized, context-aware experience.
8

Clean Up

Always shut down the SDK cleanly to flush any pending operations and release resources:
The complete script looks like this:
main.py
9

Close the loop: retrieve → generate → ingest

A real agent doesn’t ingest in isolation. It fetches relevant context, calls the LLM with that context, and ingests the resulting turn back into memory. That is the atomic unit of using Synap. Here’s the minimum-viable version with OpenAI (B2C, user_id only):
conversation_id must be a valid UUID: the server rejects non-UUID strings. Generate one per chat thread with uuid.uuid4() and reuse it across that thread’s turns.
The metadata={"conversation_id": ...} on memories.create is for your own bookkeeping: it travels with the memory but is not indexed, so it does not register the conversation or affect scope resolution. The conversation is registered solely by record_message(...) in step 1.
On a B2B instance, thread customer_id through every call alongside user_id:
For a fully-worked FastAPI + OpenAI app (including error handling, graceful degradation, and conversation routing), continue to the First Integration guide.

What’s next?

You’ve successfully ingested your first memory and retrieved context. Here’s where to go from here:

Core Concepts

Understand the full Synap architecture: scopes, memory types, entity resolution, and the ingestion pipeline.

SDK Configuration

Configure the SDK for your production environment: timeouts, retries, logging, and credential management.

Memory Architecture

Learn how to configure what gets extracted, how it’s stored, and how retrieval ranking works.

Production Checklist

Security, performance, monitoring, and reliability best practices before going live.