amnesic — the MCP server with the most ironic name in the registry

Your database's institutional memory, as an MCP server. The name is ironic — it remembers everything.

"The MCP server with the most ironic name in the registry. It's anything but amnesic — it remembers your database so your AI doesn't have to."

Most database MCP servers are query executors: they connect, introspect, run SQL, and forget. amnesic is a semantic memory — it accumulates what your schema means (what status = 3 is, which columns are really foreign keys, what that legacy table is for) and hands it to every future session automatically. Think data catalog, minus the platform, the ingestion pipeline, and the invoice. Where amnesic fits ↓

Works with Claude Code · Claude Desktop · Cursor · VS Code · Cline · Windsurf — any MCP-compatible client.

Available on Official MCP Registry · Claude Code plugin marketplace

👋 Using amnesic? Say hi in the adopters thread — download counts can't tell me what's actually being used, and it directly shapes what gets built next.

🔒 Read-only by design. amnesic refuses to execute INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, TRUNCATE, ALTER, CREATE, EXEC, MERGE, GRANT, REVOKE — and any write statement smuggled inside a WITH CTE. Two layers of defense: static SQL analysis rejects the statement before connecting, and every query runs inside a transaction that is immediately rolled back. Safe to point at prod. Details ↓

The problem

Every session with an AI starts cold. You spend the first few minutes re-explaining what tables exist, what a status column value of 3 means, which FK connects orders to users. Then the session ends, and you do it all over again tomorrow.

amnesic fixes this. It gives your AI a persistent SQLite knowledge store — one per database — that survives across sessions. Annotate a status enum once; every future session sees those labels automatically. Discover FK relationships once; every future JOIN query uses that graph.

The knowledge is also portable and outlives your access to the database. When you rotate off a project, amnesic export hands the next developer everything you taught it — years of "oh, that column actually means…" that would otherwise leave with you.

Where amnesic fits

The database MCP ecosystem splits into two camps, and amnesic is deliberately in neither.

Query executors — DBHub, Postgres MCP Pro, Google's MCP Toolbox, and the vendor servers (Supabase, Neon). They introspect live, run SQL, and some go deep on performance — Postgres MCP Pro does genuine index tuning and PgHero-style health checks. They are excellent at this. They are also stateless: every session re-learns your schema from scratch, and nothing they return can tell you what a column means, because the database doesn't know either.

Enterprise catalogs — DataHub, Atlan, Cube, AtScale. These do hold semantic context: glossaries, column descriptions, ownership, lineage. They're also a platform commitment — metadata ingestion, a service to run, usually a paid tier. Worth it at company scale; wildly disproportionate for one developer who needs to remember what six status codes mean in a legacy MSSQL database nobody will ever onboard to a catalog.

amnesic is the third thing: catalog-grade semantic memory at query-executor setup cost. pipx install, one TOML file, a local SQLite file per database. No platform, no ingestion, no server to run.

Honest comparison

Use a query executor instead of amnesic if you want execution plans, index recommendations, or database health diagnostics — that's not amnesic's job and adding it would make it a worse version of a tool that already exists.

Use amnesic alongside one. They compose: nothing stops you running both. amnesic holds the meaning; they hold the machinery.

The rows marked ⚠️ above are known gaps with open issues — see Roadmap ↓.

Quickstart (90 seconds)

pipx install amnesic            # install the core
amnesic init                    # interactive wizard

⚡ Try it without credentials. Run amnesic init --demo instead — it adds a self-contained SQLite sample DB (e-commerce schema: customers / products / orders with FKs and an enum column) so you can exercise every tool in under a minute. Great for a first look before pointing amnesic at a real database.

The wizard asks which database type you're connecting to and tells you the one command to run if its driver isn't installed yet — you never need to guess extras up front.

The wizard:

• Asks for your database type, host, and credentials
• Tests the connection before saving anything
• Stores the password securely in ~/.config/amnesic/.env (chmod 600)
• Writes the connection block to ~/.config/amnesic/connections.toml

Then add amnesic to your AI client and restart.

brew install pipx                                  # macOS
sudo apt install pipx                              # Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)
python -m pip install --user pipx                  # Windows / generic

brew install uv                                            # macOS
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh            # Linux / macOS
powershell -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex" # Windows

uv tool install amnesic

pip install amnesic

After install, amnesic --help works from any terminal.

Where amnesic stores things

Set $AMNESIC_HOME (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME on Linux) to override the location.

Adding more connections later

amnesic add          # add another connection to existing config
amnesic test         # verify all connections
amnesic test orders.prod  # verify one connection

Setting and rotating passwords

amnesic init and amnesic add save your password automatically — for the typical setup flow, you never need to think about this section.

Use set-secret when you need to change a stored password later — IT rotated it, you mistyped it during setup, or you're hand-editing the config.

$ amnesic set-secret ORDERS_PROD_PASSWORD
Value: ****            ← hidden input (your typing is invisible)
Confirm: ****
✓ Set ORDERS_PROD_PASSWORD in ~/.config/amnesic/.env

What's the variable name? It's the env var your connections.toml references for that connection's password. The wizard auto-generates these as <CONNECTION_NAME_UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES>_PASSWORD:

To see the exact name your config uses, check ~/.config/amnesic/connections.toml — anything inside ${...} is the variable to pass to set-secret.

Under the hood: writes (or replaces) the line in ~/.config/amnesic/.env, sets file permission to chmod 600 (only your user can read it), preserves all other entries.

Managing connections and knowledge

Knowledge accumulates per connection in a local SQLite file. These commands let you move it between machines and clean up: