hive-vault 1.13.0

Unified MCP server for AI-assisted development — on-demand Obsidian vault access + worker delegation

hive-vault

Your AI coding assistant forgets everything between sessions. Hive fixes that.

Hive is an MCP server that connects your AI assistant to an Obsidian vault. Instead of loading everything upfront, it queries only what's needed — on demand.

Metric	Without Hive	With Hive
Context loaded per session	~800 lines (static)	~50 lines (on demand)
Token cost for context	100% every session	6% average per query
Knowledge retained between sessions	0%	100% (in vault)

Measured on a real vault with 19 projects, 200+ files. See benchmarks.

Quick Start

Hive runs without a vault — vault tools return a friendly error until VAULT_PATH is set, so you can install first and configure later.

# Minimal — uses default vault path ~/Projects/knowledge
claude mcp add -s user hive -- uvx --upgrade hive-vault

# With a custom vault path
claude mcp add -s user hive -e VAULT_PATH=$HOME/path/to/vault -- uvx --upgrade hive-vault

# Gemini CLI
gemini mcp add -s user -e VAULT_PATH=$HOME/path/to/vault hive-vault uvx -- --upgrade hive-vault

Default vault path: ~/Projects/knowledge. Override with VAULT_PATH (or HIVE_VAULT_PATH) as shown above.

For Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, and other clients, see Getting Started.

Then ask your assistant: "Use vault_list to see my vault"

Tools

Tool	What it does
vault_query	Load project context, tasks, roadmap, lessons — or any file by path
vault_search	Full-text search with metadata filters, regex, ranked results, recent changes, lesson-usage ranking (rank_by)
vault_list	Browse projects and files with glob filtering
vault_health	Health metrics, drift detection, usage stats
vault_write	Create, append, or replace vault files with auto git commit
vault_patch	Surgical find-and-replace with auto git commit
capture_lesson	Capture lessons inline / batch-extract from text / look up existing lessons by keyword (find=)
session_briefing	Tasks + lessons + git log + health in one call
delegate_task	Route tasks to cheaper models or summarize vault files
worker_status	Budget, connectivity, available models

Plus 5 resources and 4 prompts for guided workflows.

Lesson reinforcement

Every read of a lesson via vault_query, vault_search, or capture_lesson(find=…) increments a counter and grows that lesson's confidence asymptotically toward 1.0. Validated lessons rank higher than one-shot captures over time.

# Surface the top-ranked lessons matching a keyword
capture_lesson(project="hive", find="multi-process")

# Search lessons ranked by usage signal (not BM25)
vault_search(query="timeout", rank_by="reinforcements")    # most-reinforced first
vault_search(query="timeout", rank_by="confidence")        # highest decayed confidence
vault_search(query="timeout", rank_by="hybrid")            # α=0.7 BM25 + 0.3 confidence

Storage: SQLite side-table at HIVE_LESSON_DB_PATH (default ~/.local/share/hive/lesson_reinforcement.db). WAL mode + busy_timeout make it cross-process safe.

Architecture

MCP Host (Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Cursor, ...)
    └── hive-vault (MCP server, stdio)
            ├── Vault Tools (7) ── Obsidian vault (Markdown + YAML frontmatter)
            ├── Session Tools (1) ── Adaptive context assembly
            └── Worker Tools (2) ── Ollama (free) → OpenRouter free → paid ($1/mo cap) → reject

Documentation

Full documentation at mlorentedev.github.io/hive:

• Getting Started — install for all MCP clients
• Configuration — all 19 environment variables
• Vault Structure — how to organize your vault
• Use Cases — real-world workflows
• Architecture — module map and design decisions
• Troubleshooting — common issues and fixes

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup and PR workflow.

git clone https://github.com/mlorentedev/hive.git && cd hive
make install   # create venv + install deps
make check     # lint + typecheck + test (478 tests, 90% coverage)

License

MIT