memry 0.2.21

The open, self-hostable memory layer for AI agents. MCP-native, local-first, research-grade.

Memry

The open, self-hostable memory layer for AI agents - memry.tech

pip install memry
memry mcp        # your agent now has long-term memory

Memry gives any MCP-capable agent - Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex - durable long-term memory. It distills conversations into discrete facts, reconciles each new fact against what it already knows, and serves the result back as token-budgeted context. All knowledge state is a single SQLite file on your machine: no external vector database or queue service, no cloud account, and it works with zero API keys.

Why Memry

It runs anywhere, with nothing. The default install needs no services and no keys: knowledge storage is one SQLite file, retrieval falls back to FTS5 BM25 plus deterministic hash embeddings, and writes are stored verbatim. Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY and the same pipeline upgrades itself to LLM extraction and real embeddings. Local-first is the default, not a demo mode.

It remembers the way you would want it to. New facts are reconciled against existing ones: duplicates are skipped, refinements update in place, and contradictions supersede the old memory instead of deleting it. Memories are bi-temporal (valid_from / invalid_at / superseded_by), so "moved to Amsterdam" does not erase "lived in Berlin" - it dates it. Importance decays with a half-life, and a sweep retires stale trivia, again without destroying anything.

Nothing is a black box. Raw episodes are stored immutably before anything is derived from them, every memory links back to its source episodes, every mutation is an inspectable event, and every search hit carries its score signals (BM25, vector, recency, importance). When a memory looks wrong, you can trace where it came from, or re-run a better extraction pipeline over the original episodes.

Entities are disambiguated by evidence. Mentions become first-class entities. An exact first-and-last name with overlapping context merges automatically; a shared short name or full name without supporting context stays separate with a reviewable merge proposal. Prior merges are followed, so an older proposal cannot leave a broken merge target.

Topics organize themselves. Extraction tags each memory at the level a later conversation would ask about (liver health, weekly gym, 2026 taxes), reusing the vocabulary already in your store rather than coining a synonym every session. Mechanical variants such as food/foods merge without review, and Memry also spots tags that have quietly split one subject. An optional, off-by-default pass groups tags under broader parents for browsing, stored as hierarchy edges rather than copied onto every memory; it is off because retrieval measures best at the specific level, not the broad one. Search and list by topic or by date window, not just relevance.

It stays simple as one shared service. SQLite is the sole production store. One Memry server can serve many agents, devices, and tenant namespaces without an external database. For larger stores, the optional memry[ann] extra adds a rebuildable usearch HNSW candidate index. Multiple server replicas writing one store are not currently supported.

Multi-user, with real OAuth. Beyond static config tenants, one server can host runtime-managed accounts, created with memry account add. The first account is the bootstrap administrator and keeps only the existing default memory space; every later account gets one private memory space. Set MEMRY_PUBLIC_URL and Memry becomes an OAuth 2.1 authorization server for those accounts (dynamic client registration, PKCE, refresh, revocation, discovery at the domain root), so any OAuth-capable MCP client - Claude, Cursor, VS Code - can sign in and get a token scoped to that account. No IdP required; Memry verifies against its own accounts. Off by default: the single-user path stays keyless. See docs/self-hosting.md.

You can measure it. A built-in eval harness scores retrieval (recall@k, MRR, latency percentiles) deterministically and offline. An optional Mem0 adapter lets comparison or import tooling read and exercise Mem0 under the same interface; it cannot be selected as Memry's runtime store.

Quickstart

As an MCP server (any agent)

Memry speaks MCP two ways: stdio for agents on the same machine (zero config, no port, no auth) and streamable HTTP for a shared server that several agents and devices talk to.

Local, stdio - the fastest start:

# Claude Code
claude mcp add memry -- memry mcp

// Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "memry": {
      "command": "memry",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": { "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": "sk-ant-..." }   // optional but recommended
    }
  }
}

Remote, streamable HTTP - point any MCP client at a self-hosted server (see below) and share one memory across every machine:

# Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http memry https://memory.example.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <MEMRY_API_KEY>"

// Cursor / Windsurf / anything that takes a config file
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "memry": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://memory.example.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer <MEMRY_API_KEY>" }
    }
  }
}

claude.ai (web, desktop, mobile) - add Memry as a custom connector under Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. The dialog has no header field, so embed the key in the URL instead:

https://memory.example.com/mcp/<MEMRY_API_KEY>

Full walkthrough with screenshots of the flow, security notes, and troubleshooting: docs/connect-claude-ai.md.

The server exposes save_memories, search_memories, get_memory_context, list_memories, list_categories, update_memory, delete_memory, memory_history, and memory_stats. Agents are instructed to recall context at the start of a task and save durable facts as they appear. With the default infer=true, save_memories acknowledges only after the exact text is stored; the response reports enrichment: pending while a managed worker distills it when an LLM is configured.

As a Python library

from memry import MemoryStore

store = MemoryStore()

# write: extraction + reconciliation (or infer=False to store verbatim)
store.add(
    [{"role": "user", "content": "I'm Ada, a data engineer in Berlin. I prefer uv over pip."}],
    user_id="ada",
)

# read: hybrid search with explainable scores
for hit in store.search("what tooling does the user prefer?", user_id="ada"):
    print(hit.score, hit.memory.content, hit.signals)

# or a ready-to-inject, token-budgeted context block
ctx = store.reconstruct_context("help me set up a new project", user_id="ada", token_budget=1200)
print(ctx.text)

As a self-hosted server (REST + dashboard + MCP)

memry serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8787
# dashboard:  http://localhost:8787/
# REST API:   http://localhost:8787/api/v1/...
# MCP (HTTP): http://localhost:8787/mcp

The dashboard shows your memories with inline editing, filtered search, lossless JSON backup/restore, a unified Knowledge area, and a galaxy map of your topics: heavily-used topics gravitate to the gold core, the working set orbits in the teal belt, and one-off topics drift at the violet rim. Links are co-occurrence; click a planet to filter.

With Docker: docker compose up -d (see docker-compose.yml).

Or on a fresh Ubuntu/Debian VPS, one command installs Docker, Memry, and Caddy with automatic HTTPS (full guide):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cosmin-novac/memry/main/deploy/install.sh \
  | MEMRY_DOMAIN=memory.example.com bash

Set MEMRY_API_KEY to require Authorization: Bearer <key> on the API. More in docs/self-hosting.md. To plug a hosted Memry into claude.ai as a custom connector, see docs/connect-claude-ai.md.

Multi-user accounts

One server can host multiple accounts. The first account is the bootstrap administrator and uses only the existing default memory space. Every later account uses only its own name::default space. The role does not expose other accounts' memories. Manage accounts on the server with the CLI:

memry account add alice --password s3cret    # creates it, prints an API key (shown once)
memry account list
memry account issue-key alice --label laptop # another key for the same account
memry account disable alice                   # its keys + sessions stop working immediately

An account connects with its API key (Authorization: Bearer <key>, or https://<host>/mcp/<key>), or - once you set MEMRY_PUBLIC_URL=https://memory.example.com - by signing in through OAuth from any client that supports it (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code). On the dashboard, accounts sign in at /login with their name and password. Full walkthrough: docs/self-hosting.md.

From the CLI

memry add "I moved to Amsterdam and joined ASML" -u ada
memry search "where does ada work" -u ada
memry context "plan a commute" -u ada
memry history <memory_id>          # full audit trail
memry sweep                        # decay: soft-forget stale memories
memry eval --dataset evals/datasets/synthetic_v1.jsonl

How it works

flowchart LR
    A[conversation] --> E["episode + active pending memory"]
    E --> ACK[durable acknowledgement]
    E --> X[background extraction]
    X --> R{reconcile}
    R -->|new| ADD[add]
    R -->|refines| UPD[update in place]
    R -->|contradicts| SUP[supersede old]
    R -->|duplicate| SKIP[skip]
    ADD --> M[(memories)]
    UPD --> M
    SUP --> M
    Q[agent query] --> H[hybrid retrieval]
    E --> H
    M --> H
    H --> C[token-budgeted context]

1. Durable acknowledgement. The MCP fast-save path commits the exact input as an immutable episode and active, searchable pending memory before replying. That SQLite row is also the recovery marker, so no external queue is required.
2. Managed enrichment. One in-process worker drains small database batches. Each payload is extracted separately so user scopes, provenance, and retries cannot mix. Provider failure leaves the raw memory active and schedules a bounded-backoff retry; restart recovery reads the same pending rows. Without an LLM key, they stay verbatim.
3. Reconciliation. Each extracted fact is compared to similar active memories: duplicates are skipped, refinements rewrite in place, contradictions invalidate the old memory and link it to its successor. The pending raw memory is superseded only after enrichment succeeds.
4. Retrieval. BM25 and cosine similarity are fused with reciprocal-rank fusion, then boosted by recency and importance. Pending raw memories are searchable immediately.
5. Forgetting. Effective importance decays over time; memry sweep invalidates memories that fall below threshold. Tag filters (memry search -c diet) narrow any query.

Configuration

Everything works with defaults. Override via env vars, ~/.memry/config.json, or Config(...):

Env var	Default	Notes
MEMRY_DB_PATH	~/.memry/memry.db	knowledge SQLite file; back it up with auth.db when accounts are enabled
MEMRY_AUTH_DB_PATH	next to MEMRY_DB_PATH as auth.db	accounts and OAuth; include it in every complete server backup
MEMRY_DEFAULT_USER	default	user scope when the agent doesn't pass one
MEMRY_LLM_PROVIDER	auto	anthropic | openai | ollama | none - auto-detected from OPENAI_API_KEY / ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. With both keys set, OpenAI wins so the LLM and the embeddings stay on one provider (Anthropic has no embeddings API); pin this to override
MEMRY_LLM_MODEL	per provider	claude-haiku-4-5 / gpt-5-mini / llama3.1; Haiku is the Anthropic default for lower save cost and enrichment latency
MEMRY_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	auto	openai | ollama | voyage | hash | none
MEMRY_API_KEY	-	bearer token for the REST/MCP HTTP server

Anthropic extraction requires the optional SDK: pip install "memry[anthropic]".

Evaluation

memry eval --dataset evals/datasets/synthetic_v1.jsonl -k 5

The harness ingests each case through the full write path, then scores retrieval (recall@k, MRR, latency p50/p95). It is deterministic and offline, so it runs in CI. LoCoMo and LongMemEval can be formatted into the same JSONL schema to compare providers, configs, plus the optional Mem0 comparison adapter, under identical conditions. The landscape survey behind the design is in docs/research/competitive-analysis.md.

Project layout

src/memry/
  models.py            # Episode / Memory / MemoryEvent (bi-temporal, provenance)
  config.py            # env + file config, provider auto-detection
  store.py             # MemoryStore - the public API
  enrichment.py        # managed pending-memory worker and restart recovery
  retrieval.py         # hybrid search: RRF + recency + importance
  backends/            # storage contract + the production SQLite engine
  intelligence/        # extraction, reconciliation, decay, context building
  providers/           # LLMs (Anthropic/OpenAI/Ollama) & embeddings (+hash fallback)
  mcp_server.py        # MCP tools (stdio + streamable HTTP)
  rest.py              # REST API + dashboard + /mcp mount
  evals/               # retrieval eval harness; supports explicit comparison adapters

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

License

Apache-2.0