tessera-context 0.3.0rc1

Portable context layer for T-shaped AI-native users. Single-file encrypted SQLite vault served over MCP.

Tessera — Portable context for AI tools

A local-first context layer for agents and AI tools. Tessera stores durable user and project context in an encrypted SQLite vault, exposes it through a scoped MCP surface, and retrieves cross-facet bundles with hybrid search, rerank, SWCR, and token budgeting.

Open source. Local-first. Apache 2.0.

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Status

v0.1.0rc1 is live on PyPI as tessera-context. The repo contains the packaged Python CLI, encrypted vault, daemon, HTTP MCP endpoint, first-party stdio MCP bridge, connector writers, retrieval pipeline, and test suite. General availability gates on external-user demo validation and cross-platform install recording — both scoped to the v0.1.x → v0.5 stabilization window per the decision on 2026-04-25. The rc1 is install-stable for technical users; expect real-user feedback to drive a follow-up rc before GA. See docs/release-spec.md for the release bar and docs/v0.1-dod-audit.md for DoD status.

Install

From PyPI (recommended):

pip install --pre tessera-context
# or pin explicitly:
pip install tessera-context==0.1.0rc1

pip's default resolver skips pre-releases, so --pre or an explicit version pin is required. The PyPI distribution name is tessera-context; the CLI binary and Python import path remain tessera. The short tessera name on PyPI is held by a 2017-dormant Graphite dashboard project; PEP 541 reclaim is pursued in parallel.

From source (for development):

git clone https://github.com/Mathews-Tom/Tessera.git
cd Tessera && uv sync --dev
uv run tessera --help

Core local flow

tessera init   --vault ~/.tessera/vault.db
tessera daemon start --vault ~/.tessera/vault.db
tessera connect claude-desktop --vault ~/.tessera/vault.db
# or wire every detected client in one shot:
tessera connect all --vault ~/.tessera/vault.db

ChatGPT Developer Mode is deferred to v0.1.x because the current ChatGPT flow requires HTTPS/OAuth/canonical HTTP MCP compatibility that Tessera v0.1 does not yet ship. The v0.1 demo flow uses Claude Desktop and Claude Code as the MCP-capable clients.

What is Tessera

A local daemon owns a single-file SQLite vault that holds five v0.1 context facets:

• identity — stable user facts
• preference — behavioral rules and tool preferences
• workflow — repeated procedures
• project — active work context
• style — writing voice samples

MCP-capable tools connect with scoped capability tokens and call six tools: capture, recall, show, list_facets, stats, and forget. A bare recall searches every facet type the token can read, then returns a budgeted cross-facet bundle.

The lead user is the AI-native developer who wants durable context across Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, local model workflows, and custom harnesses without handing memory to a hosted service.

Where to read, by role

If you want to	Read
Pitch to a colleague or evaluate whether this is interesting	docs/pitch.md
Understand the market position, category claim, and trade-offs	docs/system-overview.md
Understand the architecture, schema, retrieval pipeline, encryption	docs/system-design.md
Understand the SWCR retrieval algorithm and its ablation bar	docs/swcr-spec.md
Understand the security model and threat analysis	docs/threat-model.md
Understand how migrations are safe	docs/migration-contract.md
Understand how debuggability works without telemetry	docs/determinism-and-observability.md
Know what ships in v0.1, v0.3, v0.5, v1.0	docs/release-spec.md
Know what will never ship	docs/non-goals.md
Review the load-bearing decisions	docs/adr/
Fix an install failure, bad first run, or a broken connector	docs/troubleshooting.md

Posture

This is a solo-developer craft project by Tom Mathews, paced by evening and weekend velocity while a dissertation on agentic memory systems lands in parallel. The v0.1 commitment is explicit; v0.3 and beyond are contingent on real-user signal. There is no telemetry, no hosted service in v0.1, and no model reselling ever. See docs/non-goals.md for the full list of things Tessera will not become.

The reason this exists is that the amnesia tax is real for a growing audience — T-shaped users operating across three or more AI tools a week — the engineering shape is interesting, and the adjacent products in the space treat memory as flat blobs in someone else's cloud. Tessera treats it as structured context on disk.

License

Apache 2.0. No CLA.