Re:Show HN: Sonder – self-hosted AI social simulation engine
by neilsharma425 on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @12:50AM
(#47421698)
The "specific grievance" detail is what makes this interesting. Most multi-agent sims feel flat because agents are just goal-oriented — giving them a pre-existing tension before the scene starts is a much more realistic model of how real conversations actually work.
Curious how you handle grievance drift over a long session — does it fade as the agent "resolves" it, or does it stay fixed as a personality constant?
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Re:Show HN: Sonder – self-hosted AI social simulation engine
by RedsonNgwira on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @03:42AM
(#47422756)
Right now grievances are fixed — they live in the agent's .md file and persist
as a personality constant throughout the session. update_mood() shifts emotional
state tick by tick, but it doesn't rewrite the underlying grievance.
Your question is actually pointing at the most interesting unsolved problem in the project. A grievance resolution arc — where the .md file itself gets rewritten mid-simulation as the agent "processes" something — would make long sessions feel genuinely different from short ones. It's on the roadmap but I haven't built it yet.
The risk is it could make agents feel too therapeutic. Real people carry grievances for years. Not sure the right answer yet.