OwnMemory

Local-first persistent memory for AI agents. Runs entirely on your machine — SQLite storage, on-device embeddings, hybrid search, and a Cursor-compatible MCP server. No Supermemory account. No cloud API. Your silicon, your data.

This is a replacement component, not a client shell around someone else’s service.

What you get

Data directory (default): ~/.ownmemory/

• ownmemory.db — memories + FTS index

• models/ — cached embedding weights (downloaded once from Hugging Face, then offline)

Related MCP server: Memory MCP

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:47321.

Smoke-test the engine (isolated temp DB):

npm run smoke

Cursor plugin / MCP (the important part)

This repo ships as a Cursor MCP server (stdio plugin). Project config is already in:

.cursor/mcp.json

Open this folder in Cursor → Settings → MCP → enable ownmemory (approve project MCP if prompted). Tools memory, recall, whoAmI, listSpaces then appear in the agent tool list.

OwnMemory-owned ~/.cursor slices

Canonical copies live in this repo under .cursor-home/ and are symlinked into ~/.cursor (do not reverse the ownership):

After clone (or to repair links):

# edit .cursor-home/mcp.json args to this machine's absolute bin path, then:
ln -sfn "$PWD/.cursor-home/mcp.json" ~/.cursor/mcp.json
ln -sfn "$PWD/.cursor-home/hooks/ownmemory-context.py" ~/.cursor/hooks/ownmemory-context.py
ln -sfn "$PWD/.cursor-home/rules/ownmemory-over-mem0.mdc" ~/.cursor/rules/ownmemory-over-mem0.mdc

.cursor/mcp.json stays project-scoped (${workspaceFolder}). ~/.cursor/hooks.json and chat-compressor files stay in the home Cursor directory.

Env overrides are optional — unset values use ~/.ownmemory and Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-embed-s.

Run the server by hand (stdio; used by Cursor, not for browsers):

npm run mcp

Agent behavior for this workspace is also steered by .cursor/rules/ownmemory.mdc.

Connectors

Optional host plugins — enable only what the machine uses:

• Cursor — standalone Cursor plugin (MCP + hooks + skills). ./connectors/cursor/scripts/install-local.sh

• OpenClaw — memory plugin with recall, store, forget, and turn hooks.

• Open WebUI — a Workspace tool plus a filter that call this same HTTP API.

Mem0 packaging notes (local plugin cache audit): docs/mem0-cursor-plugin-report.md.

MCP tools (Supermemory-shaped + 0.3 additive)

• memory — { content, action?: "save"|"forget", containerTag? }

• recall — { query, includeProfile?, containerTag? }

• whoAmI — local status

• listSpaces — list spaces

• get_memory — { id }

• update_memory — { id, content?, metaType?, pinned?, branch?, meta? }

• delete_memory — { id, hard? }

• list_memories — { containerTag?, limit?, offset? }

Resources: ownmemory://profile, ownmemory://projects
Prompt: context — system-context injection text

HTTP API

Environment

Default embedder is arctic-s (~67MB). GUI / settings.json can select MiniLM (~23MB fallback) or arctic-l (~1.3GB ONNX, 1024-d, CUDA required — otherwise falls back to arctic-s). Stock @xenova/transformers / onnxruntime-node is CPU-only; a CUDA EP build plus enough free VRAM is needed for Arctic-L. First use downloads weights into models/. After changing the embedder, run npm run reembed and reload MCP. If embeddings fail, keyword (FTS5) search still works.

Architecture

Cursor / agents ──stdio──► MCP server (src/mcp/server.ts)
                              │
Web console / HTTP ───────────┼──► engine (src/lib/memory/*)
                              │
                              ├── SQLite + FTS5
                              └── @xenova/transformers (local)

Nothing phones home for memory storage or search.

What this is not (yet)

• Cloud connectors (Drive, Gmail, Notion)

• Proprietary long-horizon extraction models (bring your own Ollama later if you want distillation)

• Multi-machine sync (your problem to solve with backups / syncthing if needed)

Those are optional layers. The core loop — remember → recall → forget on your disk — is here.

License

OwnMemory is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation. The license is GPL-2.0-only: version 2 applies, and later versions of the GNU GPL are not granted by this notice.

OwnMemory is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty, without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The full terms are in LICENSE.

Copyright (C) 2026 Rob Bloodgood.

Each original source file carries the same copyright notice and the standard GPL version 2 grant. That notice is the boilerplate for this program. It is not a substitute for the license text.

Third-party material

Packages listed in package.json remain under their own licenses. The interface primitives in src/components/ui/ were generated from the shadcn/ui registry and remain available under the MIT License. Including those files in this tree does not relicense them. See NOTICE.