project-tessera 0.6.4

Tessera — Personal Knowledge Layer for AI. Own your memory across every AI tool.

Tessera

Make Claude Desktop remember your entire workspace.

You have hundreds of documents — PRDs, meeting notes, decision logs, session records. Claude Desktop can read files you attach, but it can't search across your whole workspace. Tessera bridges that gap.

It indexes your local documents into a vector store and connects to Claude Desktop via MCP. When you ask a question, Claude automatically searches your files and answers with context — and remembers across sessions.

Why Tessera?

• No servers to run — No Ollama, no Docker, no API keys. Everything runs locally.
• Cross-session memory — Claude remembers your decisions and preferences between conversations.
• Auto-sync — File watcher detects changes and re-indexes in the background.
• 100% local — Nothing leaves your machine.

Get started

1. Install

pip install project-tessera

Or with uv:

uvx --from project-tessera tessera setup

2. Setup

tessera setup

This does everything for you:

• Creates a workspace config
• Downloads the embedding model (~220MB, first time only)
• Configures Claude Desktop automatically

3. Restart Claude Desktop

That's it. Ask Claude about your documents and it will search them automatically.

Supported file types

Type	Extension	Install
Markdown	.md	included
CSV	.csv	included
Excel	.xlsx	pip install project-tessera[xlsx]
Word	.docx	pip install project-tessera[docx]
PDF	.pdf	pip install project-tessera[pdf]

What Claude can do with Tessera

31 tools across search, memory, knowledge graph, and workspace management.

Tool	What it does
Search
search_documents	Semantic + keyword hybrid search across all your docs
unified_search	Search documents AND memories in one call
view_file_full	Full file view (CSV as table, XLSX per sheet, etc.)
read_file	Read any file's full content
list_sources	See what's indexed
Memory
remember	Save knowledge that persists across sessions
recall	Search past memories from previous conversations
learn	Auto-learn: save and immediately index new knowledge
list_memories	Browse saved memories
forget_memory	Delete a specific memory
export_memories	Batch export all memories as JSON
import_memories	Batch import memories from JSON
memory_tags	List all unique tags with counts
search_by_tag	Filter memories by specific tag
Knowledge Graph
find_similar	Find documents similar to a given file
knowledge_graph	Build a Mermaid diagram of document relationships
explore_connections	Show connections around a specific topic
Indexing
ingest_documents	Index your documents (first-time or full rebuild)
sync_documents	Incremental sync — only re-index changed files
Workspace
project_status	See what's changed recently in each project
extract_decisions	Find past decisions from logs
audit_prd	Check PRD quality (section coverage, versioning)
organize_files	Move, rename, archive files
suggest_cleanup	Detect backup files, empty dirs, misplaced files
tessera_status	Server health: tracked files, sync history, cache stats
health_check	Comprehensive workspace diagnostics
search_analytics	Search usage patterns, top queries, response times
check_document_freshness	Detect stale documents older than N days

CLI commands

tessera setup                   # One-command setup (recommended)
tessera init                    # Interactive setup with more options
tessera ingest                  # Index all configured sources
tessera sync                    # Re-index only changed files
tessera check                   # Check workspace health
tessera status                  # Show project status
tessera install-mcp             # Configure Claude Desktop
tessera version                 # Show version

How it works

Your documents (Markdown, CSV, XLSX, DOCX, PDF)
        |
   Parse & chunk
        |
   Embed locally (fastembed/ONNX)
        |
   Store in LanceDB (local vector DB)
        |
   Expose via MCP server
        |
   Claude Desktop searches automatically

Advanced: Manual Claude Desktop config

If tessera setup didn't configure Claude Desktop automatically, add this to your claude_desktop_config.json:

With uvx (recommended — no venv needed):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tessera": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "project-tessera", "tessera-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

With pip install:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tessera": {
      "command": "tessera-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Config file location:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Configuration

tessera setup creates a workspace.yaml with sensible defaults. You can edit it:

workspace:
  root: /Users/you/Documents
  name: my-workspace

sources:
  - path: .
    type: document

All parameters are configurable:

search:
  reranker_weight: 0.7       # Semantic vs keyword balance
  max_top_k: 50              # Max results per search

ingestion:
  chunk_size: 1024           # Text chunk size
  chunk_overlap: 100         # Overlap between chunks

watcher:
  poll_interval: 30.0        # Seconds between scans
  debounce: 5.0              # Wait before syncing

License

AGPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.

For commercial licensing: [e-mail]