chat-recall

One memory across every AI coding tool you use. Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex, OpenCode and Antigravity share a single searchable history — and the agent can search it itself.

Your coding agents each keep their own transcripts, in their own format, in their own directory, and none of them can read another's. chat-recall indexes all of them into one place, redacts secrets on the way, and exposes the result to your agent through 52 MCP tools so it can recall its own past work instead of you re-explaining it.

That cross-tool part is the point. A single tool's built-in history stops at its own boundary; this does not.

Install

npx chat-recall init

That indexes the transcripts already on your disk, detects which AI tools you have, and registers the MCP server in ~/.mcp.json. Then:

chat-recall search "that auth bug"      # search everything you have ever done
chat-recall recent                      # what was I working on

By default this syncs to the hosted server at chatrecall.dev, which starts with a 14-day trial that needs no card and is a paid subscription after that — see pricing. To keep everything on your own machine instead, run the server yourself: that is free for one person, forever, with every feature and no licence key, and a licence only buys collaboration — a second member, shared history, the team board. See Self-host below. Either way the CLI is the same binary and the same commands; only the server URL differs.

No API keys are required. Postgres full-text search is the default backend; vector search and AI summaries are upgrades, not prerequisites.

Related MCP server: Total Recall

Four things it actually does

1. Cross-tool unified memory. One index, one search, one UI over Claude Code (~/.claude/projects/), Gemini CLI (~/.gemini/tmp/), Codex (~/.codex/), OpenCode (~/.local/share/opencode/) and Antigravity. Sessions, plans, tasks, CLAUDE.md files, paste cache, shell history and agent diaries all share one pluggable MemorySource interface.

2. The agent recalls itself. 52 MCP tools, so Claude Code can recall_smart_resume, recall_search (with like_session to find similar work), recall_edits_timeline, recall_subagent_search and recall_redundant_files rather than asking you what happened last time. It writes back too, via recall_decision_record, recall_kg_add and recall_set.

3. Warns before you redo work. A UserPromptSubmit hook searches for similar past sessions on every prompt and injects a short "you have done this before, in session X" note into the agent's context.

4. Temporal knowledge graph. Decisions and tool mentions become entity-relationship triples with valid_from/valid_to windows, so you can ask what was decided in March and whether it still holds.

Add your own AI tool

A new backend is one file and one line — no changes to the engine. See docs/ADDING_A_TOOL.md. If a tool you use writes transcripts to disk, it can be indexed here, and a pull request is the fastest way to make that happen.

Optional: vector search

ollama pull nomic-embed-text
chat-recall sync --full       # re-ships; the server embeds chunks into pgvector

…or set EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=gemini with GEMINI_API_KEY if you'd rather use a hosted embedder. Without either, search falls back to Postgres FTS — same results surface, slightly less semantic.

Optional: web dashboard

The React dashboard is part of the server (SaaS or self-host docker compose) — the CLI itself has no UI. For dashboard development:

npm run web:install                 # install web deps
npm run web:dev                     # API on :5000, UI on :5174

Self-host the server (docker compose)

Everything on your own machine, no account, nothing sent anywhere:

git clone https://github.com/munhq/chat-recall && cd chat-recall
echo "ADMIN_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 24)"         >> .env
echo "POSTGRES_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 24)" >> .env
docker compose up -d --build          # FIRST RUN BUILDS FROM SOURCE (minutes)

Then mint a device token and connect a machine — the full sequence, with troubleshooting, is in docs/SELF_HOSTING.md.

Two containers: the server plus a bundled pgvector/pgvector Postgres, so a plain docker compose up is self-contained. Bring-your-own-Postgres is supported too (it is how the hosted service runs): set DATABASE_URL to an external Postgres 16+. The pgvector extension is needed only for semantic search — everything degrades to full-text without it.

Keep the index live (+ optional server sync)

You do not need a daemon. Claude Code spawns the MCP server, and that process syncs every 3 minutes on its own — the binary is the daemon. For a headless box with no assistant running, opt in to a background service:

chat-recall watch                    # foreground daemon: watches every tool, summaries, precompute
chat-recall watch --install-service  # systemd user unit (Linux) · launchd (macOS) · Scheduled Task (Windows)

init does not install it, on purpose. Both paths push through the same syncIncremental() under the same cross-platform index lock, so one writer touches the ledger at a time — see docs/SYNC.md before changing any of it. Secrets are masked client-side before anything leaves the machine. chat-recall sync does the same push once, on demand.

Hook it up to Claude Code

chat-recall init does this for you. Manual equivalent in ~/.mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chat-recall": {
      "command": "chat-recall-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Then install the hooks (one command sets up auto-save, pre-compact backup, and the resume-hint that warns when you're about to redo work):

chat-recall install-hooks                 # registers all five events, in every Claude profile
chat-recall install-hooks --no-resume-hint  # skip the resume warning
chat-recall install-hooks --no-wakeup       # skip the session-start wake-up bundle
chat-recall install-hooks --no-escalate     # skip the session-end escalation
chat-recall install-hooks --uninstall     # remove all of ours, leave third-party hooks alone

Companion: codeindex (auto-detected)

There's a separate MCP server called codeindex (Zig binary, ~56 MB) by munhq that gives the agent code-level lookup. The two compose:

• chat-recall = session memory. What have I worked on? What did we decide?

• codeindex = code memory. Where is this symbol? Who calls it? What breaks if I change it?

Together the agent can answer "have I built this before?" and "does it already exist in this codebase?" before redoing work.

How chat-recall handles it: chat-recall init detects whether codeindex is on your PATH (or at ~/.local/bin/codeindex). If yes, it registers it as an MCP server in ~/.mcp.json automatically — no download, no surprise. If no, it prints a one-line hint about how to get it.

chat-recall init                       # default — detect and register if installed
chat-recall init --with-codeindex      # additionally force-download the binary
chat-recall init --skip-codeindex      # don't even check
chat-recall companions install         # download manually (after init)
chat-recall companions status          # show what was detected
chat-recall companions uninstall       # remove the binary + MCP registration

codeindex is open source (MIT) at github.com/munhq/codeindex. The install is optional — chat-recall works entirely without it; you just don't get the code-level tools.

What gets indexed

MCP tools (52, including 4 code-intelligence tools that register when the codeindex companion is installed)

Search & retrieve — recall_search, recall_memory_search, recall_recent, recall_show, recall_context, recall_summary, recall_smart_resume, recall_project_context, recall_weekly_digest, recall_analytics_summary, recall_wake_up.

Pattern detection — recall_search with like_session: <id> (find work similar to a given session), recall_redundant_files (warn when a new filename overlaps prior work), recall_diff with files_only: true (what files session X actually touched), recall_edits_timeline with group_by: "session" (which sessions edited auth.rs).

Subagents & filters — recall_subagent_search (search inside hidden Explore/aside/compact transcripts), recall_user_prompts (only what the human typed, banner-stripped).

Findings, ranked — recall_claude_suggestions (every finding that becomes an agent-instruction change: the CLAUDE.md rules and skill installs, merged across account scope and every indexed project) and recall_improvements (everything else, ranked most urgent first, with create_tasks: true to open one team task per item). They partition the same recommendation engines, so an item never appears in both.

Knowledge graph — recall_kg_query, recall_kg_add, recall_kg_invalidate, recall_kg_timeline, recall_kg_stats. Plus recall_decision_record to write a decision as both a triple and a diary entry in one call.

KV state — recall_set, recall_get (no key = list the scope). Small persistent values keyed by namespaced strings: "current PR url", "branch I'm working on", user prefs.

Diary & status — recall_diary_write, recall_diary_read, recall_status (includes memory breakdown), recall_index. Plans/tasks: search via recall_memory_search(source_types:['plan','task']), read via recall_show.

When the codeindex companion is installed, the agent also gets 16 code-level tools (find_symbol, find_callers, get_imports, plan_change, get_change_impact, analyze, etc.) from a separate MCP server. They compose: chat-recall finds what you've done; codeindex tells you what currently exists.

Search architecture

Search runs on the server. Two backends, Postgres FTS is the default:

• Postgres FTS — zero extra setup. Keyword search with ranking. Always available.

• Vector (pgvector) — opt-in, and needs an embedder: Ollama, any OpenAI-compatible embeddings endpoint, or a Gemini API key. The vector width follows the model you point it at, so pick one embedder and keep it — changing it means a full re-index.

The CLI ships redacted chunks to the server, which indexes them. If no embedder is configured, every search tool transparently falls back to FTS.

Cost tracking

Cost in USD is computed from token usage when at least one model in the session has a rate the server knows. For every other model — anything local, anything self-hosted, anything newer than the rate table — the dashboard shows — instead of fabricating a number. The summary surfaces a sessionsWithoutPricing counter, so you can see how much of the total the figure actually covers.

Wake-up context

chat-recall memory wake-up

Builds a small bundle for an AI session: optional identity blurb, the top 10 chunks the classifier flagged as decisions/preferences/milestones at importance ≥ 4, and a snapshot of currently-valid knowledge-graph facts. No magic compression — just the highest-signal items the indexer already tags.

Data locations

The CLI keeps almost nothing locally — just what it needs to reach the server:

All indexed content — chunks, FTS, vectors, knowledge graph, secret findings, diary — lives on the server (Postgres for self-host and SaaS). Reset it by wiping the server's Postgres data, not anything under ~/.chat-recall.

Privacy

Your sessions sync to a chat-recall server — either one you self-host (your own box, your own Postgres) or the SaaS. Before anything leaves the CLI it is redacted: secrets are masked client-side, so the server never receives raw credentials. Self-hosting keeps all data on infrastructure you control; the SaaS is the hosted alternative.

No telemetry. Your data lives in your server's Postgres — back that up however you like. On the SaaS it lives in the hosted Postgres; self-host if you'd rather keep it entirely on your own infrastructure.

Architecture

packages/
├── engine/src/
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── backends/        ToolBackend per AI tool (claude, gemini, opencode, codex, agy)
│   │   ├── tool-backend.ts  Registry interface — single source of truth for tool identity
│   │   ├── tool-paths.ts    Env-overridable default paths for each tool
│   │   ├── generic-engine.ts  Shared turn extraction / edit scan / replay (canonical events)
│   │   └── …                Indexing, storage, embeddings, summaries, KG, classifier
│   └── parsers/             *-source.ts plugins per content type (sessions, plans, tasks, …)
├── cli/
│   ├── src/cli.ts           CLI
│   ├── src/mcp.ts           MCP server
│   ├── auto-indexer/        chokidar-based watcher daemon (systemd-friendly)
│   └── hooks/               Claude Code hooks (install via `chat-recall install-hooks`)
└── server/
    ├── src/                 Express API
    ├── client/              React + Vite UI — the dashboard
    └── cloud/migrations/    Empty by design — pg-schema.ts owns the schema

docker/                  Dockerfile + entrypoint for the server image
e2e/                     Playwright tests for the dashboard

Two extension points, both registry-driven:

• Adding a new content type (e.g. another file format to index) — implement MemorySource (discover → parse → extractLinks) and register it in the SourceRegistry.

• Adding a new AI tool (a sixth backend alongside Claude/Gemini/OpenCode/Codex/Antigravity) — implement ToolBackend (paths, ID handling, readEvents, fileToolMap, extractEditDelta) and register it in packages/engine/src/core/backends/index.ts. Walkthrough: docs/ADDING_A_TOOL.md. All paths are env-overridable via CHAT_RECALL_{CLAUDE,GEMINI,CODEX,AGY}_HOME / CHAT_RECALL_OPENCODE_DB.

Requirements

• Node.js 22 or later. The Docker image and CI run 24.

• Sessions written by a supported tool, in its standard location: ~/.claude/, ~/.codex/, ~/.local/share/opencode/, ~/.gemini/.

That is the whole list. No API key is needed to install, index or search.

Two features are opt-in, and each one needs a back end that you choose:

Without either back end, search falls back to Postgres FTS and sessions carry no generated summary. Everything else works the same.

License

Elastic License 2.0 for the whole repository.

In plain terms: use it, modify it, run it for yourself or inside your company, free and without asking. The one thing you may not do is offer it to third parties as a hosted or managed service — that is the product. You also may not strip the licence-key checks or the copyright notices.

It is source-available, not OSI open source, and this README will not pretend otherwise. It replaced a split where the CLI and engine were MIT and the server was BSL 1.1, which answered "may I use this?" three different ways inside one repository.