FIMemory

A local store your AI tools can read, once connected and told to.

FIMemory (FI Memory, by Future Industries) keeps your notes on your own computer, and connects your AI tools to them so you stop re-explaining the same project every session. The store is an ordinary folder of your own files: no proprietary format, no server, no account, nothing uploaded anywhere. New stores are encrypted at rest by default. You choose a passphrase, a 24-word recovery phrase prints once, and the files stay private wherever they travel: a git host, a cloud backup, a USB stick. Prefer files you can open in a text editor directly? Plaintext is one explicit choice away at setup, and an encrypted store exports back to readable Markdown any time, gated by nothing but your key.

Start here

Two commands.

npm i -g fimemory
fimemory setup

If that first command fails with EACCES: permission denied (common on macOS, where npm's default global folder is root-owned), give npm a folder you own and retry. No sudo needed:

npm config set prefix ~/.npm-global
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.npm-global/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc
npm i -g fimemory

Then close and reopen any AI tool that was already running, because they read their settings when they start.

That is the whole install. setup creates the store if you do not have one, connects every AI tool it finds on this machine, then checks its own work and prints what landed and what did not. Running it again is safe and boring: everything already in place reports unchanged and nothing is rewritten. When you are not sure whether it worked, run it again.

Creating a store on a terminal, setup walks you through encryption: you choose a passphrase (or press one key to opt out with --plaintext), it prints your 24-word recovery phrase once and asks you to prove you wrote it down, then leaves the store unlocked on this machine for about 8 hours. In a script or CI there is no prompt: pass --passphrase "...", set GESTALT_PASSPHRASE, or say --plaintext. With none of those it refuses cleanly rather than guessing. Lose both the passphrase and the 24-word phrase and the data is gone, by design; that is what "your key, not our servers" costs, and the guided run will not let it happen silently.

One step setup cannot finish for you is Claude Code, which manages its own config file. setup checks whether the claude command exists on this machine: if it does, it prints a single claude mcp add line for you to paste. If it does not (the VSCode extension and the desktop app install no command line), it prints the exact JSON block and the file to put it in instead. Either way it lands under Next steps rather than scrolling past.

If a step fails, the run keeps going and the failure gets its own line. Fix that line, run fimemory setup again, and the steps that already worked stay put.

Three commands you will want later:

• fimemory onboard is the guided first step AFTER setup: it walks you through approving your first suggested edit, asks three questions about how you work and writes the answers into the store, then shows a search answering with your own facts. A wired store that holds nothing about you feels broken even when nothing is; this is the shortest way past that.
• fimemory doctor reads the whole setup back and tells you in plain words what is missing and what to do about it. A half-finished install is the most common way this goes wrong.
• fimemory setup --plaintext does the same install with an UNENCRYPTED store: every file readable in a text editor, by you and by any person or program with access to the folder. It is a real choice, stated plainly, not a hidden downgrade. A store that started plaintext can adopt encryption later with fimemory encrypt (cheapest before real content accumulates).

Before, a working install and a dead one looked identical. Now the install tells you which one you have.

Honest expectations

• Installed and used by a person on Windows, macOS and Linux. Not a runner claim: these are hand installs on real machines that then did real work, with two different AI tools reading and writing one store daily for months. The Windows box and the Mac each run Claude Code and Grok against it; the Linux box runs it headless. CI additionally builds, typechecks, tests, and global-installs the packed package on Linux and macOS runners every push. What that still does not cover is the long tail of host apps: a runner has no desktop session, so for any client other than the ones named below we have not watched the config setup wrote actually get loaded. On Linux the clipboard commands need xclip, or wl-clipboard on Wayland, and neither is installed by default. Run fimemory doctor if something looks wrong, and please report it.
• It isn't cheaper than not remembering. It's correct for a small premium, and far cheaper than pasting everything.
• Agents read it when connected and told to. setup writes the MCP config, the rule text and the retrieval hook for you, but no memory product can force a host to consult it unprompted on every turn.
• Automated Sync is not shipped. Multi-machine works via your own git remote, under your own account. No Sync service exists yet, so nothing you write ever leaves your machine unless you configure a remote yourself.
• The shipped scope is your machines, several agents. Point two machines at one private git remote: fimemory join <url> on the second machine, then fimemory pull before and after sessions. Edits to the same note never silently merge; the losing side becomes a pending proposal for you to review. Team features beyond your own remote are not in it.

What setup actually runs

Five steps, in this order:

1. init, only when there is no store at ~/.fimemory (an existing ~/.gestalt from an earlier install is detected and kept). Skipped, never overwritten, when one is already there.
2. install-mcp, which writes the MCP server entry into each host config file it finds. This is what gives an assistant the ability to read the store.
3. install-hooks, which writes Claude Code's retrieval hook into ~/.claude/settings.json. Skipped when ~/.claude does not exist.
4. install-rules, which writes the memory rule block into each host's rules file. This is what makes an assistant actually use the store.
5. doctor, which reads all of it back and reports.

Hooks run before rules on purpose. The shim rule text tells the model that relevant notes may already be in the turn, injected by the retrieval hook. That sentence is only true once the hook is installed, so the hook goes first and its outcome picks the wording: hook installed means Claude Code gets the shim wording, hook skipped means every host gets the search-first wording, which is true unconditionally. Writing the shim wording without the hook would tell the model to stop searching in exchange for an injection that never arrives, which is worse than doing nothing.

Every step is wrapped so that a failure becomes that step's line and the run continues. A rules file you cannot write must never cost you the MCP registration, and neither may cost you the doctor verdict that says which of them landed. setup also runs on a locked encrypted store, which is the normal case on a second machine, and lets doctor report the lock.

The individual verbs still exist and still work on their own: init, install-mcp, install-hooks, install-rules, doctor.

Which tool gets what

* Vendor-documented, unverified on disk. Windsurf, Cursor and Claude Desktop are not installed on any machine we have checked, so we have never seen these paths exist. If one of them ignores the store after setup says installed, that is the first thing to suspect: check the app's own settings for where it really keeps rules, and re-run fimemory install-rules --file <path>. Every other row in the table has been seen on disk.

Read the full README on GitHub →