bettermemory 3.27.0

Memory you can verify — a trust layer between an AI coding agent and its own past: per-hit staleness verdicts, claim-level use attribution, measured effectiveness, episodic run-state. MCP-native, local-first, MIT, no cloud.

An MCP memory server for coding agents. Stored facts get checked against the filesystem and git before the model relies on them, so a memory that has rotted is flagged instead of quoted back at you.

Install

uv tool install bettermemory
bettermemory init --client claude-code   # or claude-desktop / cursor / cline

Restart the client. bettermemory doctor exits 0 when it's wired correctly and prints a one-line fix for anything that isn't.

Kick the tyres without installing: uvx bettermemory try writes a memory citing a file, deletes the file, and shows the next search flagging it. Offline, throwaway store.

What it does

• Every hit carries a staleness verdict — calendar age, the paths it cites, commits landed since it was last confirmed.
• Nothing is auto-injected; retrieval is a deliberate tool call. The 18 default tools do cost ~35 KB of schema per turn either way; the description half of that is capped in CI.
• Write gates: transient state, secret-shaped tokens and near-duplicates bounce; claims about you stage for confirmation.
• One markdown file per memory. Greppable, git-syncable. Markdown is canonical; the SQLite index next to it is a derived cache you can delete. No cloud, no account.
• bettermemory eval measures whether memory actually helped, against your own log. Ours is published — a floor, from one user's store, caveats and misses included.

For agents

You were likely handed this link with "set this up." Steps are idempotent and safe to re-run:

1. uv tool install bettermemory — or pipx install bettermemory, or pip install bettermemory into a venv. Python 3.11–3.14.
2. bettermemory init --client claude-code — likewise claude-desktop, cursor, cline. For any other MCP host, plain bettermemory init prints the canonical mcpServers JSON snippet plus known config locations. (Continue needs a hand-written YAML entry — see docs/clients.md.)
3. bettermemory doctor — exit 0 means correctly wired; every failed check prints a one-line fix.
4. Have the user restart the client so the server loads, then confirm by asking the model "what memory tools do you have?"

Your operating contract — tool signatures, retrieval discipline, write gates — is docs/api.md; the server's instructions block delivers the core policy automatically. For the long-form policy in your system prompt: bettermemory init --with-addendum. Migrating from Claude Code's built-in auto-memory: bettermemory ingest imports those files once.

Everything else

You shouldn't need it, but it's all written down: mechanics, storage format, the full tool surface, CLI, configuration and limitations in internals; per-client setup in clients and installation; eval methodology in eval; postmortems in incidents; release history in CHANGELOG; dev setup and the compatibility contract in CONTRIBUTING.

MIT licensed — see LICENSE.