poppy-memory 0.2.0

Developer memory CLI. Remember what matters.

Poppy is a developer memory CLI and MCP server. Your AI coding agent stores decisions, preferences, and lessons in a local SQLite store, then recalls them when they're relevant. No cloud, no API keys, no per-query cost.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trags-garden/poppy/main/install.sh | bash

Then wire up your agent:

poppy setup claude-code   # or: claude-desktop, cursor, windsurf, codex,
                          #     copilot-cli, pi, goose, hermes-agent

What it does

• remember stores a fact, decision, preference, or lesson.
• recall pulls the few memories most relevant to a query.
• MCP server: agents call remember/recall/forget/consolidate directly. Works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, Copilot CLI, Pi, Goose, and Hermes Agent.
• Hooks: Claude Code's SessionStart and UserPromptSubmit hooks surface relevant memories as additional context for every prompt.
• Zero-touch capture: with your one-time consent, Poppy extracts durable memories from your sessions automatically, locally, using the coding-agent CLI you already have. See Zero-touch capture.
• Interchangeable engines: retrieval runs on a swappable local engine; the default, bloom, tracks the current best by benchmark. See Engines.

poppy remember "we always use uv for python deps" --type preference
poppy recall "python package manager"
#   we always use uv for python deps
#     preference | 2026-05-25 | score: 0.91

Zero-touch capture

With the Claude Code hooks installed, Poppy can also extract durable memories from your sessions automatically: decisions, preferences, and lessons that would help a future session, written one sentence each.

Nothing is captured without your consent. Capture ships enabled by default but stays inert until you record a one-time consent:

poppy consent --enable     # turn automatic capture on
poppy consent --disable    # opt out (persists across upgrades)
poppy consent --status     # show the current consent and capture state

poppy setup claude-code asks once on a TTY (pass --yes for non-interactive installs). Until you decide, every session start shows a short notice and nothing runs. Opting out persists permanently; a later default change can never silently re-enable capture you turned off.

What fires when, once consent is granted:

• Every 3rd prompt, a detached background worker reads only the transcript turns added since the last capture and extracts memories from that window. It never blocks your prompt, captures no turn twice, and stops at a per-session soft cap.
• At session end, a backstop pass flushes whatever the mid-session loop has not captured yet.
• After context compaction, the compact summary is consolidated the same way.

Extraction runs locally through the same coding-agent CLI you already use (claude, codex, or gemini), on your existing login. Your conversation never leaves your machine, and Poppy never auto-spends on a paid remote model: if only an API-key backend is configured, capture stays off and tells you why.

Before anything is written, a reconciler dedups each candidate against the store: clear duplicates are skipped, clear updates supersede the old memory (tombstoned and restorable for 7 days), and everything uncertain is added rather than merged.

What is stored, all locally under ~/.poppy/:

• the extracted memories themselves, in memories.db, each tagged with the source app and session id;
• a capture journal (capture_journal.jsonl) recording what each capture stored, so the session banner and poppy doctor can show it;
• per-session progress state (capture_state.json). The journal and state files are per-device and are never synced anywhere, not even to Trags.

Every session start prints a one-line status banner (active with counts, a loud INACTIVE when something is broken, or the consent nudge), and poppy doctor reports the full capture state. POPPY_CONSOLIDATE=1/0 remains an explicit environment override in both directions.

Engines

Retrieval runs on one of three interchangeable engines. Switch any time with poppy engines use <name> (--migrate re-embeds your existing memories for the new engine):

Name	What it is
bloom	Default. Hybrid (FTS5 + bge-small embeddings + RRF) into a cross-encoder rerank, with per-speaker content expansion. ~600 MB ML deps.
sprout	Mid tier. Same two-stage architecture, a lighter bi-encoder, no expansion.
seed	FTS5 only. No ML deps, no model downloads. The universal floor.

How the three engines compare on retrieval quality, latency, and footprint: see benchmarks/BENCHMARKS.md.

bloom is the evolving default champion: a future release can promote a better local engine into bloom, chosen by benchmark rather than by hand, so your default retrieval improves over time. sprout and seed are stable anchors that don't change under you. No engine's architecture ever changes silently. Every change ships in a release with notes, and poppy stats always shows the exact architecture you're running as engine vX.Y.Z.

Because a new champion can use a different embedding model, your stored vectors may need refreshing: run poppy migrate-engine after switching engines, or if recall quality dips after a bloom upgrade. If an upgrade ever changes behavior you depend on, switch to sprout or seed for a setup that stays put.

Commands

Command	Flags	What it does
poppy remember CONTENT	--type, --project, --ttl, --expires-at, --supersedes, --check-conflicts, --auto-supersede	Store a memory.
poppy recall QUERY	--project, --type, --since, --limit, --json, --include-expired	Search memories, ranked by relevance to the query.
poppy list	--project, --type, --since, --limit, --json, --include-expired	List all memories, newest first.
poppy edit MEMORY_ID	--content, --type, --project, --no-project, --ttl, --expires-at, --no-expiry	Edit a memory in place.
poppy forget MEMORY_ID	--yes	Delete a memory by ID.
poppy expire	--yes	List memories whose TTL has passed; --yes purges them.
poppy stats		Show memory stats.
poppy engines		List the engine catalog with the active engine starred.
poppy engines use NAME	--migrate	Switch the active retrieval engine.
poppy migrate-engine	--project, --memory-type, --since, --all, --dry-run	Re-embed memories so their vectors match the active engine.
poppy config set KEY VALUE		Set a config value.
poppy consent	--enable, --disable, --status	Manage consent for automatic capture. See Zero-touch capture.
poppy telemetry	status, on, off	Show or change anonymous usage telemetry. See Telemetry.
poppy serve		Start the Poppy MCP server (stdio).
poppy ui	--host, --port, --no-open	Browse and manage memories in a local web UI.
poppy setup claude-code	--hooks/--no-hooks, --claude-md/--no-claude-md, --yes	Install Poppy into Claude Code (MCP + hooks + CLAUDE.md primer).
poppy setup claude-desktop	--print-instructions, --print-import-prompt	Register the Poppy MCP server in the Claude desktop app.
poppy setup cursor		Install Poppy into Cursor (MCP only).
poppy setup windsurf		Install Poppy into Windsurf (MCP only).
poppy setup codex		Install Poppy into Codex (MCP only).
poppy setup copilot-cli		Install Poppy into GitHub Copilot CLI (MCP + AGENTS.md primer).
poppy setup pi		Install Poppy into Pi (MCP via pi-mcp-adapter + AGENTS.md primer).
poppy setup goose		Install Poppy into Goose (MCP extension + .goosehints primer).
poppy setup hermes-agent		Install Poppy as a Hermes Agent memory provider plugin.
poppy setup trags	--api-url	One-command device-code onboarding for Trags cloud sync.
poppy sync push	--dry-run	Send local memories + tombstones to Trags.
poppy sync pull	--dry-run	Apply Trags rows newer than the last pull watermark.
poppy sync run	--dry-run	Pull then push, full bidirectional sync.
poppy sync status		Show watermarks and last-sync time.
poppy import claude-memories	--dry-run, --projects-dir	Import auto-memory files from ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/memory/.
poppy import hermes-memories	--dry-run, --memories-dir	Import paragraphs from ~/.hermes/memories/{MEMORY,USER}.md.
poppy build mcpb	--output-dir	Build a Claude Desktop Extension bundle (.mcpb).
poppy hook ...		Claude Code hook entrypoints (session-start, user-prompt-submit, pre-tool-use, post-compact, session-end, stop, replay-compact, replay-session-end). Invoked by the hooks that poppy setup claude-code installs.
poppy doctor		Verify the installation: engine, storage, MCP config, hooks.

Run poppy COMMAND --help for full flag descriptions.

Storage

Memories live at ~/.poppy/memories.db (set POPPY_DIR to override). The schema is a single SQLite file with FTS5 plus an embeddings table; back it up the same way you'd back up any SQLite DB.

Sync to Trags (optional)

If you want your memories searchable across machines and inside the Trags web app, run poppy setup trags to onboard. Sync is opt-in and additive; your local store remains the source of truth.

Browse memories

poppy ui    # opens a local web UI at http://127.0.0.1:7800

Telemetry

Poppy sends a small number of anonymous usage events to PostHog (EU region) so we can see which features get used. The distinct ID is a random UUID generated on your machine and stored in ~/.poppy/analytics.json; it is not derived from hardware, accounts, or anything identifying.

This is the complete list of events and the properties they carry:

Event	When	Properties
cli_install	once, before the first event from a machine	version (Poppy version), python_version, platform (darwin, linux, win32)
memory_write	poppy remember	memory_type (fact, decision, preference, lesson), has_project (true/false), source (manual)
recall_call	poppy recall	query_length (character count), result_count, engine (engine name)
agent_setup	poppy setup <client>	agent (client name, for example claude-code)

Never sent: memory content, recall query text, project names, file paths, config values, API keys, or anything else you type into Poppy. Properties are counts, lengths, version strings, and fixed enum values only. If you onboard to Trags with poppy setup trags, the random device UUID is shared with the Trags server so it can link this machine's telemetry to your account.

The first time the CLI runs with telemetry on, it prints a one-line notice to stderr. Turn telemetry off any time; the choice persists in ~/.poppy/config.json:

poppy telemetry off       # or: poppy telemetry status | on

Setting POPPY_TELEMETRY_OFF=1 in the environment also turns telemetry off and overrides everything else. When telemetry is off, Poppy makes no telemetry network calls at all.

Hacking on it

git clone https://github.com/trags-garden/poppy
cd poppy
uv sync
uv run pytest -v
uv run poppy --help

License

GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE. Poppy's source is open, but the project does not accept external contributions; see CONTRIBUTING. Bug reports are welcome via GitHub issues; for security vulnerabilities use SECURITY instead.