Strata

Strata is a knowledge graph for a personal archive and the website published from it. It stores everything in one libSQL (Turso) database:

• Archive entities: works, projects, talks, events, people, places, themes, notes, with a markdown body and frontmatter.

• Relations between entities and source documents (derived_from, shown_at, involved, ...).

• Source documents: raw imported text, chunked for search.

• Notes: private captures, kept as entities of type note and served as a memory stream.

• Publish projections: the block or markdown content a site renders, versioned by revision.

• Status feed: dated entries (Reading, Travelling, Listening, ...) plus optional note pages.

• Media: images copied to Vercel Blob with responsive variants and rights metadata.

It ships as a CLI (strata), an MCP server (strata-mcp) and a TypeScript library. The site that renders the content is yours to write; Strata is the data layer behind it.

Install

npm install -g @marcuswendt/strata
# or per project
npm install @marcuswendt/strata

Requires Node 22.12 or later. Image variant generation uses the optional dependency sharp.

Related MCP server: braintube-mcp

Database

Strata talks to libSQL over HTTP using @libsql/client/web, so the same code runs in serverless functions. That client cannot open file: URLs. For local work run a libSQL server:

sqld --db-path ./strata.sqld --http-listen-addr 127.0.0.1:8080
# or
turso dev --db-file ./strata.db --port 8080

and set STRATA_DATABASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080. For Turso, use the libsql:// URL and an auth token. The schema is applied automatically on first use.

Configuration

Settings are read from, in order of precedence:

1. the process environment

2. the file given with --env-file <path> (both binaries accept it)

3. .env.local in the current working directory

4. .env in the current working directory

A value set earlier is never overridden by a later source.

Cache purging is optional. Without a revalidate URL and token, writes skip it silently.

CLI

Every command takes --json for machine-readable output. strata <command> --help lists the options.

strata status                          # database URL and table counts
strata capture "an idea worth keeping"  # private note
strata search "glacier"                # notes, source chunks and entities
strata search "glacier" --scope public # public entities only
strata context "glacier" --purpose talk_brief
strata get work:glacier-light --body --relations
strata list work

In search and context results, private notes appear once, in the memory stream. They are not repeated among archive entities unless you ask for --type note.

MCP

strata-mcp is an MCP server on stdio (newline-delimited JSON-RPC). Add it to a client such as Claude Code or Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "strata": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "-p", "@marcuswendt/strata", "strata-mcp", "--env-file", "/path/to/strata.env"]
    }
  }
}

Tools: search, fetch, strata_search, strata_get, strata_context, strata_list, status_list, strata_status, strata_page_blocks, strata_diff, strata_page_replace, strata_doctor, strata_surfaces_orphans, strata_media_originals. Pass --public to expose only search and fetch, restricted to public content.

To serve MCP over HTTP from your own app, use the tool layer directly:

import { buildStrataMcpTools, callStrataMcpTool } from "@marcuswendt/strata/mcp";

Library

import {
  createStrataClient,
  resolveStrataDatabaseConfig,
  applyStrataSchema,
  captureStrataMemory,
  strataSearch,
  getPublishedContent,
} from "@marcuswendt/strata";

const config = resolveStrataDatabaseConfig(); // or { url, authToken }
const db = createStrataClient(config);
await applyStrataSchema(db);

await captureStrataMemory(db, { title: "First note", body: "..." });
const results = await strataSearch(db, { query: "note", scope: "private" });

db.close();

All repository functions take the libSQL client as their first argument. Types are included.

Development

npm install
npm run build     # tsc to dist/
npm run assets    # regenerate the bundled policy assets after editing assets/

License

MIT, see LICENSE.