Deja Vu vs Witness

In-depth architectural comparison of the Deja Vu and Witness MCP servers. Compare execution transports, security boundaries, tool capabilities, quality scores, and ready-to-paste client installation snippets for Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and VS Code.

Which MCP Server Should You Choose?

Choose Deja Vu when:

• You need dedicated capabilities in the Knowledge & Memory domain.
• You prefer local stdio subprocess transport architecture.
• Your security boundary fits: No auth required (Free / Open Source).
• Primary tools included: deja.

Explore Deja Vu Details

Choose Witness when:

• You need dedicated capabilities in the Knowledge & Memory domain.
• You prefer local stdio subprocess transport architecture.
• Your security boundary fits: No auth required (Free / Open Source).

Explore Witness Details

Feature & Specification Comparison

Specification	Deja Vu vshulcz Knowledge & Memory	Witness Knowledge & Memory
Summary	Local memory layer over the session histories coding agents already write (Claude Code, Codex CLI, opencode): lexical search, recall tools, session-start auto-recall, secret redaction at index time, cross-machine sync over SSH.	Second brain for Claude Code & OpenCode: distills how your patterns and knowledge evolve over time.
Category & Scope	Knowledge & Memory

Tools & Capabilities Breakdown

Ready-to-Paste Client Configurations

Paste either (or both) of these JSON server blocks into your client config file (e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json).

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vshulcz-deja-vu": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@vshulcz/deja-vu"
      ]
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "witness": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "witness"
      ]
    }
  }
}

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