Give your AI Agents a permanent memory in 60 seconds

Contributions welcome! Browse open issues to contribute, or join the MARM Discord to share workflows, get setup help, and connect with other builders.

Table of Contents

• Quick Start
• Why MARM Memory
• Performance & Scaling Benchmarks
• MCP Client Setup
• Runtime CLI Commands
• Complete MCP Tool Suite
• Using MARM: Talk, Don't Call Tools
• Understanding MARM Memory
• Knowledge Graphs: Code & Concepts
• Architecture & Internals
• Troubleshooting
• Contributing
• Project Documentation

Quick Start

1. Install and initialize with your preferred agent profiles:

pip install marm-mcp-server
marm-memory init --g-claude --g-codex --g-gemini

Also available: --g-qwen and --g-kiro. Run without flags to install into your current project folder instead of home

1. Hand off to your AI companion. Tell your agent:

"Use the marm-init skill to set up MARM."

1. Interact: Your agent will handle the entire setup (Python/Docker, HTTP/STDIO, keys, and client configs) interactively right inside your chat.

Manual setup

Prefer to wire it up yourself:

Replace "agent" with your client’s CLI command (for example, claude, gemini, or qwen). For Codex, use codex mcp add marm-memory --url http://localhost:8001/mcp instead.

• ⚡ Fastest HTTP Startup: Run marm-memory fast-start-http to spin up the local runtime, launch the console, and open it in your browser immediately.
• 🖥️ Web Console: Run marm-memory console to view the local UI app instantly (no Node.js required).
• ⚙️ Lifecycle Management: Manage the background daemon using status, logs --follow, restart, and stop.
• 💡 Quick Flags: Use --no-console or --no-browser to restrict startups. Run marm-memory --help for full command lists.

Why MARM Memory

Your AI forgets everything. MARM Memory doesn't.

marm-memory gives your agents a private, shared memory for the context that normally gets lost between chats: decisions, research, fixes, notes, and project history. Switch from Claude Code to Codex or Gemini without losing the context already gathered.

It brings three things together:

• 🧠 Core Memory (7 tools) stores conversations, notes, notebook entries, and summaries so they stay searchable.
• 💻 Code Graph (5 tools) maps your repository so agents can find symbols, follow code paths, and understand the project without rereading it all. Point it at a repo once and it keeps itself current as you work.
• 🧩 Concept Graph (2 tools) connects people, decisions, errors, and ideas from your stored memories, with links back to relevant code when available. It builds itself as you store memories.

All 14 tools work over HTTP and STDIO. Your agents share the same local memory across sessions instead of starting from scratch each time. The built-in Console lets you see and manage what is saved.

How It Works

See Performance & Scaling Benchmarks for retrieval latency, concurrency, and write-cost numbers, and Architecture & Internals for the mechanisms behind each layer.

Runtime CLI Commands

marm-memory is the local runtime manager installed with the Python package. These are the normal operational commands; use marm-memory <command> --help for flags and command-specific examples.

Daily runtime work

marm-memory fast-start-http                # start HTTP, Console, and open the browser
marm-memory start                          # start or reuse the managed HTTP runtime
marm-memory start --profile swarm          # shared multi-agent preset
marm-memory stop                           # stop the managed runtime safely
marm-memory restart                        # restart the managed runtime
marm-memory status                         # inspect runtime, database, queue, and graph status
marm-memory logs --follow                  # follow bounded runtime logs
marm-memory console                        # start or reuse the bundled local Console

Transports and setup

marm-memory http                           # run HTTP in the foreground
marm-memory stdio                          # run the strict local MCP STDIO transport
marm-memory init                           # install the MARM skill into detected agents (project scan)
marm-memory init --g-claude                # install the skill into the home-folder claude directory
marm-memory doctor                         # diagnose the local install
marm-memory key init                       # create or reuse ~/.marm/.env without displaying the key
marm-memory key path                       # print the managed key-file path
marm-memory key reveal                     # explicitly display the managed key
marm-memory console --import-key           # open an authenticated local Console session
marm-memory upgrade --check                # compare the installed package with PyPI
marm-memory uninstall                      # preview package removal; always preserves ~/.marm

Knowledge, projects, and maintenance

marm-memory knowledge status               # Indexers, models, and how far behind automatic indexing is
marm-memory knowledge build --all          # Rebuild the whole concept graph (new memories index themselves)
marm-memory knowledge auto off             # Stop indexing memories automatically (on, off, status)
marm-memory projects list                  # List all tracked workspaces
marm-memory projects index <path>          # Add a repo to the code graph (kept current after that)
marm-memory projects status                # Inspect target repo graph readiness
marm-memory projects auto off              # Stop re-indexing repos automatically (on, off, status)
marm-memory maintenance status             # Check internal database optimization state
marm-memory maintenance embeddings migrate # Upgrade old 384-dim vectors to 512-dim
marm-memory maintenance chunks rechunk     # Recalibrate long memory text splits

Docker commands are documented separately below because they require explicit data mounts, network exposure, and key-handling choices.

Performance & Scaling Benchmarks

MARM is tuned for fast recall first, even as memory grows and long memories are chunked behind the scenes.

These measurements use the fastembed-backed jinaai/jina-embeddings-v2-small-en encoder and a throwaway local SQLite database. Every timed path calls the shipped MARMMemory code, not a benchmark-local reimplementation. Sections 1-4 are timings from a single run of scripts/benchmarking/performance/bench_hotpath.py on local hardware; absolute milliseconds vary by machine, so treat the scaling shape as the signal. Section 5 is a separate accuracy benchmark (run_eval.py) and reports two runs, for the reason given there.

1. Retrieval Latency Scaling

End-to-end recall_similar latency (includes query encoding).

Run-to-run variance at small $N$ is larger than the gap between adjacent sizes, which is why N = 250 reads slower than N = 500 here. Treat the trend from N = 1,000 upward as the real signal.

2. Encoder + Concurrency

• Cold model load: 893ms
• Warm encode: median 3.8ms, p95 4.3ms
• Concurrent recall: 10 gathered recalls completed in 151.5ms vs 176.0ms serial (gather/serial = 0.86). Do not read that as parallelism: repeated runs of this same benchmark land anywhere from 0.63 to 0.86, so the ratio is not stable enough to claim a speedup. The path is serialized around shared encoder and SQLite work by design, and any apparent gain is measurement noise.

3. Write-Time Ingestion Cost

• Consolidation off: median 6.5ms, p95 7.6ms
• Consolidation on: median 58.1ms, p95 106.5ms
• Tradeoff: write-time dedupe/clustering adds 9.0x median cost so recall stays fast and the store stays cleaner over time. Consolidation is off by default.

4. Recall Scaling: Full Scan vs Production Hybrid

Why recall stays flat as memory grows: Instead of scanning every vector, production recall uses an FTS keyword pre-filter to narrow the candidate pool, then re-ranks using a blended semantic + BM25 + temporal score. Both benchmark columns represent authentic asynchronous code paths timed with precomputed vectors to isolate retrieval speed from raw encoding overhead. Tests alternate execution to ensure completely unbiased cache conditions.

The full scan grows roughly linearly with $N$ while hybrid recall grows far more slowly, so the advantage still widens with session size. At very small $N$ the pre-filter is not worth its overhead and hybrid is slower.

5. LoCoMo Retrieval Accuracy

All 10 LoCoMo conversations are ingested through marm_log_entry (5,882 memories), then top-5 marm_smart_recall results are scored against 1,977 evidence-annotated questions. No answer-generation model or LLM judge is used.

Performance gains are isolated to the blended retrieval pipeline and localized vector space, ensuring high multi-hop recall accuracy without relying on cloud-hosted LLM judges. Reproduce the full benchmark using scripts/benchmarking/accuracy/locomo/run_eval.py.

6. vs Competitors: Architecture

MARM targets a specific niche: local-first memory for MCP-connected coding agents, not general personalization memory or a full agent runtime. Here's how it differs architecturally from established names in AI agent memory:

Disclaimers & Accuracy: Competitor landscapes evolve rapidly. The matrix above reflects core architectural traits as of Q3 2026, based on public documentation and READMEs, not internal testing of each system. If any data point regarding an alternative framework has changed or is misrepresented, please open an issue or submit a Pull Request to update the table. We actively welcome corrections from peer maintainers.

MCP Client Setup for HTTP & STDIO

Manual pip install

pip install marm-mcp-server

Use this quick rule of thumb to choose your setup

• Local HTTP/STDIO = fastest single-machine setup.
• Docker HTTP = shared/always-on server (key required).
• Docker STDIO = private containerized local use (no HTTP key).

Swarm / multi-agent note: The write queue is enabled by default to serialize memory writes through one worker. For shared HTTP deployments, use marm-memory start --profile swarm (200 RPM) or --profile swarm-max (600 RPM). --profile trusted disables rate limiting entirely for private deployments. STDIO is still best for private single-agent/local use. See Swarm & multi-agent presets for the full table.

pip install marm-mcp-server
marm-memory start
# Stuck on client setup? Open a Q&A thread: https://github.com/Lyellr88/marm-memory/discussions
# most agents use this --transport command
"agent" mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp
codex mcp add marm-memory --url http://localhost:8001/mcp

pip install marm-mcp-server
python -m marm_mcp_server.server_stdio
# most agents use this --transport command
"agent" mcp add --transport stdio marm-memory-stdio marm-mcp-stdio
codex mcp add marm-memory-stdio -- marm-mcp-stdio

# HTTP shared server, normal multi-agent use
marm-memory start --profile swarm

# HTTP shared server, heavier private swarm
marm-memory start --profile swarm-max

# HTTP trusted private lab/server, rate limiting disabled
marm-memory start --profile trusted

# STDIO remains keyless/private and does not use swarm flags
marm-mcp-stdio

marm-memory docker command                 # preview the exact HTTP command
marm-memory docker run                     # create the managed HTTP container
marm-memory docker stdio-command           # print a Docker STDIO client command
marm-memory docker status
marm-memory docker logs --follow
marm-memory docker stop

# Optional: mount repositories read-only for code indexing.
marm-memory docker run --repo /absolute/path/to/repository

# Optional: preview or explicitly write a Compose configuration.
marm-memory docker compose
marm-memory docker compose --yes

# Shared local server with a custom data path and two repositories for indexing.
marm-memory docker command \
  --profile swarm \
  --data-dir /srv/marm-data \
  --repo /srv/projects/api \
  --repo /srv/projects/web

# Execute the reviewed command, pulling the image first.
marm-memory docker run --profile swarm --data-dir /srv/marm-data --pull

# Step 1: generate key (do not add < > around the key)
docker run --rm lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest --generate-key

# Step 2: run server
docker pull lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest
docker run -d --name marm-mcp-server \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8001:8001 \
  -e SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e MARM_API_KEY=your-generated-key \
  -v ~/.marm:/home/marm/.marm \
  lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest

# Step 3: connect client
"agent" mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer your-generated-key"

# PowerShell: set this before starting/restarting Codex
$env:MARM_API_KEY="your-generated-key"
codex mcp add marm-memory --url http://localhost:8001/mcp --bearer-token-env-var MARM_API_KEY

# Quick auth smoke test
curl -i -H "Authorization: Bearer $env:MARM_API_KEY" http://127.0.0.1:8001/mcp

# --swarm: write queue on, 200 RPM - recommended for multi-agent shared servers
docker run -d --name marm-mcp-server \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8001:8001 \
  -e SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 \
  -e MARM_API_KEY=your-generated-key \
  -v ~/.marm:/home/marm/.marm \
  lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest --swarm

$env:MARM_API_KEY="test"

# The second -v line mounts your repo; adjust the host path to your project
docker run -d --name marm-mcp-server `
  -p 127.0.0.1:8001:8001 `
  -e SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 `
  -e MARM_API_KEY=$env:MARM_API_KEY `
  -v ~/.marm:/home/marm/.marm `
  -v C:\Users\lyell\Desktop\marm-memory:/workspace/marm-memory `
  lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest

marm_graph_index(repo_path="/workspace/marm-memory")

docker run --rm -i \
  -v ~/.marm:/home/marm/.marm \
  --entrypoint python \
  lyellr88/marm-mcp-server:latest \
  -m marm_mcp_server.server_stdio

Connect your client

Start the server (python -m marm_mcp_server), then wire up your client below. Every block assumes the default local install (no key). For Docker or exposed servers, add the Authorization: Bearer header shown in each client's collapsible.

claude mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "marm-api-key",
      "description": "MARM API Key for Docker or exposed server mode",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "marm-memory-local": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
    },
    "marm-memory-docker": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:marm-api-key}"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "marm-memory-local": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
    },
    "marm-memory-docker": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:MARM_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

# Direct Python install - no key needed
codex mcp add marm-memory --url http://localhost:8001/mcp

# Docker or SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 - key required (set MARM_API_KEY in your shell first)
codex mcp add marm-memory --url http://localhost:8001/mcp --bearer-token-env-var MARM_API_KEY

[mcp_servers."marm-memory"]
url = "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
enabled = true
bearer_token_env_var = "MARM_API_KEY"

# Direct Python install - no key needed
gemini mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp

# Docker or SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 - key required
gemini mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer your-generated-key"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "marm-memory": {
      "httpUrl": "http://localhost:8001/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer your-generated-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

# Direct Python install - no key needed
qwen mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp

# Docker or SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0 - key required
qwen mcp add --transport http marm-memory http://localhost:8001/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer your-generated-key"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "marm-memory": {
      "httpUrl": "http://localhost:8001/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer your-generated-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "type": "mcp",
  "server_url": "https://your-marm-domain.example.com/mcp",
  "server_label": "marm-memory",
  "authorization": "Bearer your-generated-key"
}

Full platform walkthroughs, key setup, and OS-specific notes: Windows · Linux · Docker/key mode · Other platforms

Using a client that isn't listed? Open an issue and let us know; client adapters are a first-class feature request.

curl http://localhost:8001/health

Complete MCP Tool Suite (14 Tools)

💡 Pro Tip: You don't need to manually call these tools! Just tell your AI agent what you want in natural language:

• "Claude, log this session as 'Project Alpha' and add this conversation as 'database design discussion'"
• "Remember this code snippet in your notebook for later"
• "Search for what we discussed about authentication yesterday"

The AI agent will automatically use the appropriate tools. Manual tool access is available for power users who want direct control.

🧠 Core Memory (7 tools)

🕸️ Code Graph (5 tools)

🧩 Concept Graph (2 tools)

All 14 tools are available on both HTTP and STDIO. Behind the tool surface, the server handles lifecycle setup, protocol refresh, docs indexing, date context, summary-cache maintenance, write queue handling, concept indexing, code re-indexing as repos change, project/platform attribution, and health checks automatically; none of those consume the agent's attention or tokens. The two graph engines start lazily on first use and never block the 7 core memory tools if they fail to start. See Architecture & Internals for the mechanisms.

Using MARM: Talk, Don't Call Tools

MARM handles lifecycle work internally. Docs and session state initialize on the first real tool call, and packaged docs are indexed into the marm_system memory namespace with source-file hash tracking, so your agent can answer MARM usage questions from memory itself.

Example Workflow: Cross-AI Research Project

A realistic workflow showing MARM in action. Scenario: you're researching authentication patterns for a new project using multiple AI clients.

Phase 1: Route Session (Claude)

You: "Claude, create a MARM session called 'auth-research-2025-01'"
Claude calls: marm_log_entry(entry="Session: auth-research")
Result: Session routed to auth-research-[today]. MARM lifecycle/docs initialize automatically.

Phase 2: Capture Research (Claude)

You: "Summarize OAuth2 vs JWT for API authentication and save it"
Claude calls: marm_log_entry(entry="Research: OAuth2 is token-based with refresh cycles, better for delegated access. JWT is stateless, good for microservices...", session_name="auth-research-2025-01")
Result: Research captured in the active session log and marked for summary-cache refresh

Phase 3: Add Reusable Reference (Claude)

You: "Save a JWT validation code snippet to my notebooks as 'jwt-validation-pattern'"
Claude calls: marm_notebook(action="add", name="jwt-validation-pattern", data="def verify_jwt(token):\n  # validation logic...")
Result: Reusable snippet stored for future projects

Phase 4: Recall Context (Gemini)

You: "Gemini, what authentication approaches did we research? Activate the JWT pattern."
Gemini calls: marm_smart_recall("authentication patterns", search_all=True)
Gemini calls: marm_notebook(action="use", names="jwt-validation-pattern")
Result: Gemini sees previous research + has JWT code available as context

Phase 5: Synthesis & Summary (Qwen)

You: "Qwen, pull everything from the auth research and create a summary"
Qwen calls: marm_smart_recall("authentication", session_name="auth-research-2025-01", limit=20)
Qwen calls: marm_summary(session_name="auth-research-2025-01")
Result: Qwen generates an implementation guide from all captured research

Phase 6: End Session (Claude)

You: "Log final decision - we're using JWT for APIs, and OAuth2 for user auth"
Claude calls: marm_log_entry(entry="DECISION: JWT for API auth, OAuth2 for user flows. Rationale: stateless APIs + delegated user access", session_name="auth-research-2025-01")
Result: Decision logged and searchable by all future AI clients

Result: Three different AI clients collaboratively researched a topic, shared insights, and documented decisions. All without re-explaining the project to each new AI.

Advanced patterns

Project Structure:
├── project-name-planning/          # Initial design and requirements
├── project-name-development/       # Implementation details
├── project-name-testing/           # QA and debugging notes
├── project-name-deployment/        # Production deployment
└── project-name-retrospective/     # Lessons learned

Understanding MARM Memory

Two searches, two very different problems, one tool:

User: "I discussed machine learning algorithms yesterday"
MARM Search: Finds related memories about "ML models", "neural networks", "AI training"

User: "What was the COMPACTION_TRIGGER_COUNT setting?"
MARM Search: Finds the exact config memory even if the rest of the text differs

The first query is about meaning, so MARM reranks candidates with local vector embeddings — RAG-style semantic search without a hosted vector database. The second is syntax-shaped (a config key), so MARM detects that automatically and routes it through deterministic exact matching instead. This exact-retrieval lane is the difference between a memory system that works in demos and one that answers the questions developers actually ask: config keys, CLI flags, file paths, API names, error strings. Pure-semantic memory systems fail at exactly those queries.

Memory types & classification

1. Context Logs - Auto-classified conversation memories
2. Manual Entries - Explicitly saved important information
3. Notebook Entries - Reusable instructions and knowledge
4. Session Summaries - Compressed conversation history

MARM automatically categorizes content on write: Code (programming snippets and technical discussions), Project (work conversations and planning), Book (literature, learning materials, research), and General (everything else).

Project & platform attribution

MARM stores nullable project and platform columns on memories, log entries, and notebook entries. The project is detected from the working directory and the platform from the connecting client (Claude Code, VS Code, Cursor, ...); MARM_PROJECT and MARM_PLATFORM override detection. marm_smart_recall(project=..., platform=...) scopes recall without changing the default unfiltered behavior, so one shared server can hold several projects without cross-contamination.

Knowledge Graphs: Code & Concepts

MARM ships two graph systems that complement the memory store: a code graph that understands your repository's structure, and a concept graph that understands what your stored memories are about. When both are indexed for the same project, concept entities cross-link to code symbols.

Code Graph: repo indexing and code lookup

marm-graph is bundled into both transports. It indexes a repository once, then lets agents ask code-structure questions without repeatedly scanning files:

Use marm_graph_index to index this repository.
Then use marm_code_lookup when you need symbols, files, or source snippets.
Use marm_graph_trace for call paths, marm_graph_architecture for an overview, and marm_graph_impact for change-risk checks.

The recommended agent workflow: index once, then marm_code_lookup before broad file reads, marm_graph_trace when callers/callees or data-flow context matters, marm_graph_architecture for orientation, and marm_graph_impact before risky refactors. One graph query replaces dozens of grep/read cycles, which is where the token savings come from.

Once a repository is indexed, MARM keeps it current on its own. A background poller notices when the repo has changed and re-indexes it, so there is no need to re-index by hand after a commit. While you have uncommitted work it refreshes every cycle, since no cheap check can see repeated edits to a file that is already modified. To index only on request instead:

marm-mcp-server projects auto off

An agent can do the same with marm_graph_index(action="auto_off"), and action="auto_status" reports what is being watched and when each project was last indexed. The switch persists across restarts and beats the GRAPH_AUTO_INDEX environment variable.

Under the hood, the engine is codebase-memory-mcp (MIT), a zero-dependency static binary that parses 158 languages through tree-sitter with Hybrid LSP type resolution for the major ones, indexes an average repository in seconds, and answers structural queries in under a millisecond. MARM pins a specific release, verifies its tool schema on startup, and routes its 14 upstream tools through 5 focused MCP tools so the model surface stays small. The graph backend starts lazily on first graph-tool use, so memory, logging, notebook, and summary tools still start fast. In Docker, the engine binary is baked into the image; local pip installs fetch it on first graph use (~269MB, one time).

Degraded mode: if the graph engine fails to start (no network for the first-run download, disk full, schema drift) or GRAPH_ENABLED=false is set, graph tools return {"status": "error", "message": "graph backend unavailable"} while the other 9 tools keep working normally. Graph failures can never take down memory.

Concept Graph: what your memories are about

MARM extracts a knowledge graph from the memories you store, producing typed entities (concepts, decisions, patterns, errors, tools, people, organizations) connected by typed relationships (fixes, implements, depends_on, uses, causes, replaces, extends). This happens on its own: storing a memory queues it, and a background worker adds it to the graph roughly 30 seconds later. marm_concept_build is still there for a full or scoped rebuild. Once there is a graph, marm_smart_recall adds bounded related entities, relationships, and linked code as a graph_context sidecar without changing primary memory ranking. marm_concept_recall remains available for explicit graph exploration:

marm_concept_recall(query="write queue")            → the entity, its relationships, linked code symbols
marm_concept_recall(query="related to SQLite", depth=3) → multi-hop traversal of everything connected

How to use it:

• Automatic by default: new memories reach the graph without a tool call. Set CONCEPT_AUTO_INDEX=false to go back to manual builds only, which stops the worker but keeps recording queue rows, so turning it back on picks up everything written while it was off; CONCEPT_INDEX_DEBOUNCE_SECONDS (30) and CONCEPT_INDEX_BATCH_SIZE (20) control the pace.
• Safe on both transports at once: a leased lock in the memory database keeps a rebuild in one process from dropping graph tables while another process is writing to them. A build that finds the graph busy says so instead of colliding.
• Failure never reaches your memories: indexing runs on a durable queue outside the write path. Extraction problems retry, a memory that fails repeatedly is parked with its error, and the memory itself stores and recalls normally throughout.
• Clearing a backlog costs some recall speed: entity extraction is CPU-bound, so while the worker is working through a queue, measured recall goes from ~8ms to ~16ms median on a real 768-memory corpus. Writes are unaffected. It only applies while a backlog is draining, which for most people is once, after the upgrade rebuild. Reproduce it with scripts/benchmarking/performance/bench_concept_worker.py --from-live.
• Build for the backlog: marm_concept_build scoped to a session_name, project, or search_all=True indexes memories stored before automatic indexing existed, and rebuilds after an upgrade that requires one.
• Upgrade twice so far: graphs built before platform attribution, or before compaction sources replaced summaries as the indexed rows, require marm_concept_build(search_all=True). A full build backs up and resets only the derived concept database; targeted builds refuse to guess platform ownership.
• Whole scope, paged: builds read every memory in scope. CONCEPT_BUILD_ROW_CAP (default 500) is the page size, so lowering it makes a build read more, smaller pages rather than skipping the rest.
• Compacted sessions: the original memories are indexed and the generated summary is not, so concepts stay attributed to where they were actually stated.
• Recall fails open: a missing, empty, incompatible, or unavailable concept graph never blocks normal memory recall. The response reports graph status separately.
• Code cross-linking: when the code graph has indexed the same project, concept entities that match code symbols get linked, connecting "what we decided" to "where it lives in the code."
• Bundled extraction runtime: the spaCy runtime and English extraction model ship with MARM but load only on the first extraction, which now happens on its own shortly after the first memory is stored rather than when you run a build. If a damaged or partial installation makes them unavailable, both concept tools degrade cleanly while core memory remains available; run marm-memory knowledge status, then reinstall MARM if needed.
• Isolated storage: the concept graph lives in its own SQLite database (~/.marm/index/marm_index.db) with its own connection pool, so concept-graph writes can never block or corrupt the production memory database.
• Console atlas: MARM Console renders the complete atlas up to 750 entities and 6,000 stored relationships. Larger graphs use a deterministic connected sample of up to 600 entities and 4,000 aggregated visual edges, clearly labelled as sampled.

This fills the cross-session structure gap that flat memory search leaves open: sessions organize memories, but the concept graph connects them, so "what depends on the write queue?" is answerable even when the answer spans five sessions from three different agents.

Architecture & Internals

Everything above runs on a small number of deliberate mechanisms. This section is the full map, so you (or your agent) never have to guess what the server is doing.

Storage engine

• SQLite in WAL mode at ~/.marm/marm_memory.db with a connection pool (5 connections). WAL keeps readers unblocked during writes, which matters when several agents recall while one writes.
• FTS5 full-text index (memories_fts) is maintained as an external-content table over the memories table and powers both the exact lane (BM25) and the filter stage of hybrid recall.
• Chunk storage: memories past ~180 words are split into overlapping 150-token chunks (50-token overlap) in a memory_chunks table, each with its own embedding. Recall scores chunks and collapses to the parent memory.
• Embeddings come from the fastembed-backed jinaai/jina-embeddings-v2-small-en encoder: 33M parameters, 512 dimensions, an 8,192-token context window, and an Apache-2.0 license. It does not require separate query/document text prefixes. The encoder is lazily loaded on first semantic use and serialized behind a lock so concurrent encodes can't corrupt each other. If it is unavailable, writes still succeed; memories are stored without embeddings until it loads. Semantic scoring runs as a single NumPy batch (matrix cosine) rather than a Python loop.
• The concept graph gets its own database (~/.marm/index/marm_index.db) and its own pool, reusing the same pool implementation but never sharing connections with the memory store. Deliberate isolation: an experimental graph build must not be able to stall the production WAL. The one exception is the indexing queue, which lives in the memory database on purpose so a memory and its indexing task commit together; the graph itself stays derived and disposable.

Write path

• Serialized write queue (enabled by default): all memory writes flow through one internal async worker, eliminating SQLite writer contention under multi-agent load. The queue is generic; compaction applies go through the same worker, so there is exactly one writer no matter which subsystem is writing. MAX_QUEUE_SIZE bounds it.
• Write-time consolidation (opt-in, CONSOLIDATION_ENABLED=1) runs two layers before a memory lands:
  • Layer 1, exact dedup: a SHA-256 hash of normalized content is checked within the session; hash hits are verified against the actual content before deduplicating, so a hash collision stores a new row instead of silently merging different content.
  • Layer 2, semantic merge: near-duplicates above CONSOLIDATION_THRESHOLD cosine similarity are merged rather than accumulated. This never blocks a write; if the encoder isn't available, the write proceeds unconsolidated.
  • The tradeoff is measured and published: roughly 9x median write cost (58ms vs 6.5ms) in exchange for a store that stays clean, because reads dominate memory workloads. See section 3 of the benchmarks above.
• Concept indexing is a durable outbox: a write records an indexing task in the same transaction as the memory, so a memory cannot exist without one. A background worker drains that queue and writes the concept graph. Nothing on the write path waits for extraction, and a process killed mid-extraction loses no work because the task is a row rather than an in-memory job. Both transports run a worker, so the two coordinate through a leased lock in the memory database rather than an in-process lock, which would not span them.
• Compaction (opt-in, COMPACTION_ENABLED=1) is Layer 3: after enough writes in a session, a background pass detects clusters of related memories using cosine similarity plus union-find connected components, gated by minimum cluster size, minimum age, and an active-session grace period so it never compacts work in flight. MARM then injects a bounded request asking the connected agent to summarize each cluster: candidates → stage → review → apply or discard. Source memory IDs are preserved on apply, so compacted summaries stay traceable to their originals. Staged summaries expire (COMPACTION_STAGING_TTL_HOURS), nudges are capped and cooldown-limited, and the injection has a byte budget. The design is honest about what LLMs are for: MARM detects, the agent summarizes, and a human-reviewable stage/apply/discard loop gates the destructive step.

Recall path

Covered in Understanding MARM Memory: exact lane (FTS5 BM25 + LIKE fallback), filter→rerank (bounded FTS candidates → batch semantic rerank → temporal blend), bounded semantic fallback with an explicit truncation flag, and chunk-collapse scoring. Recall depth (detail=1/2/3) controls how much of each memory is returned, and every MCP response passes through a 1MB response limiter that truncates content intelligently instead of breaking the protocol.

Code graph subprocess protocol

The bundled graph engine runs as a supervised child process, not an import:

• Transport: newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0 over the child's stdio, with a verified handshake (initialize → capture server version → initialized notification).
• Envelope care: responses are scanned for the first JSON-parseable content item rather than assuming index 0, because the upstream binary can prepend an update notice. Tool errors arrive as result.isError, not JSON-RPC errors, and are converted to clean {"status": "error"} dicts with the upstream's own remediation hint attached.
• Serialization: one lock guards each write+read round trip on the single stdin pipe; async callers go through asyncio.to_thread so the event loop never blocks on subprocess IO.
• Crash recovery: stderr is drained on a background thread, child EOF/crash is detected, and the process is transparently respawned on the next call. Timeouts are deliberately not treated as crashes; a long index run may still be working, and killing it would destroy in-flight work.
• Supervision: a lazy singleton supervisor owns the client for the process lifetime. Startup is triggered by the first graph-tool call or by the auto-index poller if the engine binary is already downloaded, never raises into the MCP layer, and verifies the pinned binary's tool schema so upstream drift is caught at startup instead of mid-call.
• Auto re-indexing is git-signature polled, not filesystem watched: a background task compares each indexed repo's HEAD and dirty state, computed by running git outside the engine so an idle check costs no engine lock. A commit triggers a re-index. While the tree is dirty the repo is re-indexed every cycle, because git status reports which files changed and not what is in them, so repeated edits to one already-modified file produce byte-identical output that no cheaper fingerprint can distinguish. Git runs with core.fsmonitor disabled and a scrubbed environment, since that setting names a program git would otherwise execute from a watched repository on a timer.
• One gate for every store mutation: manual indexes on all three surfaces, the poller, and project deletion all pass through a single leased row in the memory database. HTTP and STDIO are separate processes with separate engine children over one shared engine store, so an in-process lock cannot span them. The lease is released when the engine call actually returns rather than when its caller stops waiting: a cancelled request cannot hand the store to another process while the engine is still writing to it.

Security & rate limiting

• Two-mode auth gate: keyless on loopback (127.0.0.1), MARM_API_KEY (Bearer) mandatory the moment the server is network-exposed (SERVER_HOST=0.0.0.0, Docker). --generate-key produces one. Safe by default, zero setup friction locally.
• IP-based rate limiting with sliding windows and temporary blocks, tuned through CLI presets rather than a config maze (table below).
• Local-first: everything lives under ~/.marm/; no cloud sync, no telemetry, no external storage.
• Graceful shutdown: SIGTERM/SIGINT handlers drain and close the connection pool cleanly, and an internal event system runs automation callbacks with per-callback error isolation and timeouts so one bad hook can't wedge the server.

Swarm & multi-agent presets

The write queue serializes memory writes regardless of preset; swarm flags tune the HTTP rate limit on top of that. The queue controls write ordering; consolidation and compaction are separate memory-maintenance layers. This stack (WAL + pooling + one serialized writer + RPM presets) is intentionally scoped to "SQLite, many agents, one machine"; distributed multi-node memory is out of scope for the current design.

Self-maintaining documentation

Packaged docs are indexed into the marm_system memory namespace on startup and refreshed every 50 tool calls, with source-file hash tracking so unchanged docs are skipped and changed or deleted rows are re-indexed. Connected agents can answer MARM usage questions with marm_smart_recall instead of you pasting docs at them.

Configuration reference

Troubleshooting

marm-memory maintenance embeddings migrate

marm-memory maintenance chunks rechunk

For memory behavior, transports, supported clients, compaction, and backup questions, see the FAQ.

Star History

Contributing

MARM welcomes contributors at every level. Code helps, but so do docs, setup notes, client testing, bug reports, benchmarks, and real workflow feedback from people using AI tools every day.

Good places to help:

• Test MARM with more MCP clients, IDE agents, and operating systems
• Improve docs, screenshots, examples, and platform-specific setup notes
• Report bugs or confusing install steps with clear reproduction details
• Share memory workflows, agent habits, and tool ideas from real use
• Check out open issues

💡 Want to get your name on this list? Check out our CONTRIBUTING.md guide to get started!

Join the MARM Community

Help build the future of AI memory - no coding required!

Connect: MARM Discord | GitHub Discussions

License & Usage Notice

Copyright © 2026 Ryan A. Lyell. MARM is released under the Apache 2.0 License (see NOTICE for the copyright statement), and forks, experiments, and integrations are welcome. MARM also wraps third-party open-source components such as codebase-memory-mcp under MIT; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for attribution. If you build on it, please make unofficial versions easy to distinguish from releases published by the official MARM repository so users know what they are installing.

Project Documentation

Usage Guides

• README.md - This file: complete usage guide, tool reference, workflows, and architecture
• PROTOCOL.md - MCP operating protocol
• FAQ.md - Answers to common questions about using MARM

MCP Server Installation

• INSTALL-DOCKER.md - Docker deployment (recommended)
• INSTALL-WINDOWS.md - Windows installation guide
• INSTALL-LINUX.md - Linux installation guide
• INSTALL-PLATFORMS.md - Platform installation guide

Project Information

• CONTRIBUTING.md - How to contribute to MARM
• CHANGELOG.md - Version history and updates
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md - Contributors and acknowledgments
• ROADMAP.md - Planned features and development roadmap
• LICENSE - Apache 2.0 license terms