Gr0m_Mem

Zero-install persistent memory brain for any LLM runtime (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Continue, Cline, Zed, OpenAI Codex CLI, Aider, raw OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini APIs, or a local Llama) that stops the model from re-asking and re-deriving across sessions.

This is the main branch — the zero-install core. No ChromaDB, no Ollama, no 1 GB embedding model. Pure CPython stdlib + a couple of pure-Python wheels. pip install gr0m-mem and it just works.

For semantic retrieval (ChromaDB HNSW + Ollama embeddings) switch to the semantic branch.

Works with any LLM

Gr0m_Mem is universally compatible through three integration paths:

• MCP server — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Continue, Cline, Zed, OpenAI Codex CLI, and any other Model Context Protocol client. Setup snippets for every major client in docs/integrations.md.
• CLI shell-out — any agent framework that can run shell commands (OpenAI Agents SDK, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Aider, raw API callers): wrap gr0m_mem wakeup, gr0m_mem remember, and gr0m_mem search as tools.
• Paste-into-system-prompt — models with no MCP and no tool calling at all: copy UNIVERSAL_PROMPT.md into your system prompt and the model will drive the CLI via shell.

The loop-prevention protocol is the same across all three paths.

The problem

Claude forgets everything when a session ends. Next time you talk to it:

• It re-introduces itself.
• It asks what you're working on — again.
• It re-derives the same architectural decision you already locked in yesterday.
• It loses track of which features shipped and re-suggests them.

Other memory systems try to fix this with "let an LLM decide what to remember." That path is expensive, loses context, and still leaks reasoning. Gr0m_Mem takes the other path: record everything important explicitly, surface it at session start, and refuse to contradict it without you saying so.

How it fixes the loop

Four tools (and two Claude Code hooks) are the entire product:

The plugin's Stop and PreCompact hooks flush a milestone after every session and before every context compaction, so nothing high-value is lost to /clear or window compression. Session ids are whitelisted (tr -cd 'a-zA-Z0-9_-') before any path touch — the shell-injection bug MemPalace had to patch (Issue #110) is fixed by design here.

Zero-install promise

pip install gr0m-mem always produces a working brain. The main branch has exactly one backend:

• sqlite_fts — SQLite FTS5 BM25 full-text search. Ships with CPython's stdlib sqlite3 on every mainstream platform. No compiled extras, no embedding model, no Ollama, no network. Lexical-only, but mem_wakeup + mem_record_decision don't care about the backend — they use their own SQLite table.

Run gr0m_mem doctor to verify.

Want semantic retrieval too?

Switch to the semantic branch. It adds two more backends with auto-selection:

• chromadb — HNSW cosine over ChromaDB, best retrieval quality
• sqlite_vec — pure-Python cosine over SQLite rows, using Ollama for embeddings

Both require either the chromadb optional extra or a running Ollama with mxbai-embed-large (~1 GB). The semantic branch is a drop-in replacement — same tools, same API, richer retrieval.

Also in the box

• Temporal knowledge graph with mandatory as_of filtering. TemporalEdge carries valid_from / valid_to, SQLite persistence with partial indexes on valid_to IS NULL, and active_view() that refuses to run without an explicit temporal decision. The FactChecker runs on every add_triple and rejects contradictions in strict mode (the thing MemPalace's fact_checker.py advertised but never wired).
• Per-corpus isolation. Every corpus is its own FTS5 table — documents from different projects are never mixed. All tools require an explicit corpus argument; there is no default tenant.
• Reproducible benchmarks. The loop-prevention benchmark (8 scenarios, 15 probes) runs in CI on every push and must stay at 100%. First committed result: benchmarks/results/2026-04-08-loop-prevention.json.

Install

As a Claude Code plugin (preferred)

claude plugin marketplace add MichaelAdamGroberman/gr0m_mem
claude plugin install --scope user gr0m_mem

The plugin registers the MCP server plus the Stop / PreCompact hooks in one step.

From PyPI

pip install gr0m-mem              # zero-install core (this branch)
pip install "gr0m-mem[tokens]"    # + real tiktoken token counts

Then point your MCP client at python -m gr0m_mem.mcp_server.

Quick start

gr0m_mem doctor
gr0m_mem remember --kind identity --text "Michael, software engineer, macOS"
gr0m_mem remember --kind preference --text "terse responses, no trailing summaries"
gr0m_mem wakeup --tokens 200

Now open Claude Code. It calls mem_wakeup at session start and sees you before the first message.

Requirements

• CPython 3.10, 3.11, or 3.12. 3.13+ blocked until chromadb and the MCP SDK publish compatible wheels (affects the semantic branch; not an issue here).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.