The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Project Memory listing page.
Project Memory keeps the plan, the evidence, the decisions, the outcomes and the accepted lessons of one project in a local SQLite database. Your assistant reads and writes those records through three MCP tools. You follow the same records in a local control panel, which is read only, and you decide in the chat what is approved, accepted and merged.
It works for a software product, a consulting engagement and a workflow automation built in n8n. Work items can be code, documents, deliverables or exported workflows.
Public beta. Python 3.11 or newer is required. The runtime uses only the Python standard library. There is no telemetry, no hosted database and no account. Agent checks and delegated work run through the Codex or Claude Code CLI that you already have installed, and they consume that account's usage.
Install uv, then run this inside the project you want to remember:
For Claude Code, replace --client codex with --client claude. Setup preserves existing records and settings, connects the MCP server and the lifecycle hooks, and opens the control panel. --trust approves the project integration in that client; omit it to approve the connection yourself. Start a new assistant session afterwards. Add --no-view for a headless installation.
For a permanent command:
To install the published wheel directly from GitHub instead of PyPI:
Other local MCP clients use setup --client mcp and the stdio server. Setup and lifecycle covers client configuration, the plugins, upgrades, backups and removal.
A new project starts from one of three templates:
| Template | For | Starter documents | Phases |
|---|---|---|---|
product | A software product | docs/brief.md, docs/research.md, docs/architecture.md, docs/stories.md | Goals and brief, Research, Requirements approval, Architecture, User stories and acceptance, Build, Review and release |
engagement | A consulting engagement | engagement/brief.md, engagement/stakeholders.md, engagement/research.md, engagement/findings.md, deliverables/README.md | Scope and brief, Stakeholders and hypotheses, Research and evidence, Analysis and synthesis, Recommendations and deliverables, Client review, Handover |
automation | A workflow automation, with n8n exports in workflows/ | automation/process.md, automation/systems.md, automation/solution-design.md, workflows/README.md | Process discovery, Systems and credentials inventory, Solution design, Workflow stories and test data, Build workflows, Test with sample data, Deployment and handover |
init creates the folder, initialises git unless you pass --no-git, writes any starter document that does not exist yet, connects the clients you name and records each phase as a work item. Running it again creates nothing a second time and never overwrites a document you have edited.
Each template carries seven kickoff questions. Your assistant reads them with memory_get kickoff and asks you, for example what problem the product solves, who the stakeholders are, or which systems the process uses. It records your answers with memory_write answer_kickoff, fills the starter documents from those answers and proposes requirements. Only you approve the requirements baseline. Until that approval exists, the control panel opens on a kickoff checklist that shows the open questions, the research still needed, the starter documents that are still empty and the phases.
Tell the assistant the result you want, the constraints and what would count as complete. It then records a work item with its objective, its completion criterion, the next action and the files it may change, continues from that record in later sessions, and records each decision with its evidence, alternatives, uncertainty and expected consequence. After acting, it records what actually happened. A failure stays visible after a later success.
You approve requirements, accept or reject proposed lessons, widen the allowed paths, and decide what is merged. Capturing a document does not approve its contents, and a plan does not authorise work.
Run project-memory view in the project, or ask the assistant to open Project Memory. The panel reads the same database and refreshes while it is open. It is laid out as a Notion workspace: a sidebar of views, database tables with views, filters, sorting and grouping, and each item opening as a page beside the list, in a light or a dark theme.
| View | Content |
|---|---|
| Now | One sentence on the project position, the kickoff checklist, and the work in progress, paused, ready and done with the next step of each, and recent decisions |
| Plan | The hierarchy of phases, epics, stories, research items, deliverables and workflows as an outline with nested sub-items and progress, and a gallery of the phases |
| Work | A table and a board of work items, and a page for each with the plan, the allowed paths, dependencies, agent runs, lineage and history |
| Architecture | Components from source code, exported n8n workflows and authored items such as systems, stakeholders and deliverables |
| Dependencies | The work dependency graph with blocked chains, and the declared package table |
| Decisions | Decisions with their outcomes, and the lineage from requirement to outcome |
| Learning | Accepted guards and their recurrences, lessons awaiting your acceptance, failures without a lesson and scope widenings |
| Agents | Host availability, agent checks, delegated runs, and the merge or discard decision |
| Records | Search across every record kind, captured documents and host receipts |
| Requirements | The current requirements, their version and their approval evidence |
project-memory view --output review.html --include-bodies --no-open writes an offline snapshot instead. See the control panel guide.
project-memory export --obsidian <vault> writes the records as a folder of Markdown notes with frontmatter and wikilinks, which Obsidian opens as a vault. A work item is a folder holding its own decisions, outcomes and plans, and sources, lessons and requirement revisions sit in shared folders beside it. The graph, the backlinks and the search of Obsidian then work on the project history, while the panel stays the place where you decide.
The export runs in one direction. The database is the source of truth, the export owns one folder inside the vault and touches nothing outside it, and a note edited inside that folder is lost on the next run. After a session that wrote records, the session stop hook refreshes the vault in a separate process.
When Codex or Claude Code is configured, Project Memory can start short, separate host processes. An agent check reads the records and the project and reports on an outcome, on the current intent or on an unconfirmed execution. Delegated work runs a work item in its own git worktree, limited to the paths in its plan, and a second host reviews the resulting diff before you merge it. If one host reports a usage limit or a rate limit, the run reroutes once to the other configured host.
These runs use your installed Codex or Claude Code account and consume that account's usage. A reviewer cannot edit plans, accept lessons or merge anything. See agent checks and delegated work.
An accepted lesson with a trigger becomes a guard. When a guard matches the paths or the wording of a work item, a decision must list that lesson in lessons_considered with an explicit yes or no and a reason, otherwise the decision is rejected. When a work item has allowed paths, the lifecycle hooks block an edit outside them, record the block and ask you to extend the scope in the chat. The record fields document defines the pattern rules.
Packages are published on PyPI and in GitHub Releases.