vshulcz/deja-vu

Claude Code, Codex, opencode, aider, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Antigravity and Grok Build write every conversation to local files — gigabytes of debugged problems and design decisions you can't search. deja is a zero-dependency binary that turns those histories into a memory layer:

One binary. No models to download, no services to run, nothing leaves your machine unless you sync or share it. (opencode and Cursor IDE indexing shell out to the sqlite3 CLI, preinstalled on macOS and most Linux distros; Cursor CLI transcripts do not need it.)

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vshulcz/deja-vu/main/install.sh | sh

or:

go install github.com/vshulcz/deja-vu/cmd/deja@latest   # Go
npx @vshulcz/deja-vu "query"                            # npm, no install
brew install vshulcz/tap/deja-vu                        # Homebrew

Wire it into the agents you use (edits config, keeps a .bak):

deja install --all     # MCP recall for every agent it finds on this machine
deja install --auto    # same, plus session-start auto-recall where supported

On a terminal, install reports whether it found local history and points to deja index when the first index still needs to be built.

That's it. Next session, ask your agent:

have we dealt with jwt refresh rotation before? check your memory

— or with --auto, don't ask: the agent starts each session already knowing what you solved in that project.

Related MCP server: ctx-memory

CLI

$ deja "jwt refresh token"
[claude] api        · Jul 8 · 8f31c0a9 — 2 matches
  login started failing after refresh token rotation; jwt kid mismatch in tests
  fixed by reloading jwks cache after rotateKey and adding a clock-skew test
[codex]  web        · Jul 1 · b77d91e2 — 1 match
  refresh token cookie needed SameSite=Lax in local callback flow

deja update is for standalone installs. Homebrew and npm installs update through the package manager.

Doctor JSON

deja doctor --json reports an explicit state for every check and exits 0 even when it finds a problem. Store states are ok, missing, empty, unreadable, or parsed-zero; the last state means session files exist but the newest file produced no sessions.

{
  "stores": [{"name": "claude", "state": "ok", "paths": ["/home/me/.claude/projects"], "files": 42}],
  "index": {"state": "stale", "path": "/home/me/.cache/deja/index.db"},
  "mcp": [{"name": "claude-code", "state": "wired", "path": "/home/me/.claude.json"}],
  "sqlite3": {"state": "ok"},
  "version": {"state": "ok", "current": "1.2.3", "latest": "1.2.3"}
}

Index states are ok, missing, or stale; MCP states are wired, not-wired, or config-missing. The sqlite3 state is ok or missing. Version state is ok, update-available, ahead, dev, or unknown.

Context piping without MCP:

claude "Prior context: $(deja ctx 'database migration')"

Sync between machines

Point both machines at one shared folder (Syncthing, iCloud, a git repo — anything that moves files):

deja sync export ~/Sync/deja   # machine A: appends new batches since last export
deja sync import ~/Sync/deja   # machine B: picks up what it hasn't seen

Or skip the shared folder when the other machine is a ssh hop away:

deja sync ssh mini          # push new records to mini and import them there
deja sync ssh mini --pull   # fetch mini's new records into this machine

ssh mode uses your system ssh/scp and the deja binary on the remote (looked up on PATH, falling back to ~/.local/bin/deja).

Batches are plain JSONL, redacted on the way out. Import is idempotent, so keep the folder as an append-only log and run both commands from cron if you like. Records never echo back to their origin. --full re-exports everything regardless of watermarks — useful when adding a machine after old batches are gone. Synced sessions show up under imported:<project> in search, recall, and session-start auto-recall.

Teach your agent to remember

deja install --all wires up MCP recall (Claude Code, Codex, opencode, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Grok Build — aider has no MCP client, pipe deja ctx instead); deja install --auto does the same and adds session-start auto-recall where the harness supports it (Claude Code hook, Codex hooks.json, an opencode plugin — Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity and Grok Build have no hook that can inject context, so MCP is their full install). To make the agent reach for memory on its own, add this to your CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md:

Before debugging or re-implementing something, run `deja "<query>"` (or the
MCP recall tool) — past agent sessions across Claude Code, Codex, opencode, aider, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Antigravity and Grok Build
are indexed locally. Cite what you reuse.

MCP tools

With --auto, a SessionStart hook also feeds the current project's recent memory in automatically — read-only, capped at 2KB, and it never delays or breaks agent startup.

Security

Subagent transcripts are skipped by default (they mostly duplicate the parent session); set DEJA_INCLUDE_SUBAGENTS=1 to index them. Files caught mid-write are handled safely — the torn tail line is picked up on the next pass.

Credentials are redacted at index time: AWS keys, generic api_key=/token= assignments, bearer tokens and raw JWTs, PEM private key blocks, provider tokens (ghp_, sk-, npm_, xox., AIza), and scheme://user:pass@host URLs. The value is replaced with [redacted:<kind>]; surrounding text stays searchable. deja sources shows per-store counts. Opt out with DEJA_NO_REDACT=1 (unsafe). deja share and deja sync export re-apply redaction on the way out.

The security model documents data flows, redaction limits, trust assumptions, and release verification.

Supported harnesses

Custom locations via DEJA_CLAUDE_ROOT, DEJA_CODEX_ROOT, DEJA_OPENCODE_DB, DEJA_AIDER_ROOTS, DEJA_GEMINI_ROOT, DEJA_CURSOR_ROOT, DEJA_CURSOR_CLI_ROOT, DEJA_ANTIGRAVITY_ROOT, DEJA_GROK_ROOT, DEJA_INDEX_DIR. Each agent's own relocation variable is honored too: CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, CODEX_HOME, GEMINI_CLI_HOME, CURSOR_CONFIG_DIR, GROK_HOME, AIDER_CHAT_HISTORY_FILE, and XDG_DATA_HOME for opencode on Linux.

DEJA_RECALL=safe is the default: SessionStart recall stays in the current project, filters weak or duplicate results, prefers the last 90 days, and injects at most 2KB. DEJA_RECALL=aggressive searches across projects and raises the injection cap to 4KB. DEJA_RECALL=off disables SessionStart recall output.

Session format registry

The session format registry documents the observed store paths, record schemas, role mapping, timestamps, and compatibility notes for each supported harness. Synthetic fixtures keep those descriptions checked against the parsers.

Performance

Measured on a real corpus — 1,250+ sessions, ~3.3GB across three harnesses:

The index is incremental: when a session file grows, only that file is re-read.

How it works

Local inverted index in ~/.cache/deja: parse JSONL/SQLite stores → redact credentials → records.bin + token buckets → manifest.json tracks per-file state so repeat runs only ingest what changed. The MCP server, stats, share and sync all read the same index. Details: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Privacy: no network path exists in the indexing or search code. Local files in, local cache out.

FAQ

Does anything leave my machine? Indexing and search are local. deja update downloads releases from GitHub, and user-invoked deja sync ssh transfers redacted batches through the system SSH client. Directory exports and shares go only to the destination you choose. See the security model for the full data flow.

How is this different from cass? cass is the kitchen-sink take on session search: 22 providers, Rust, optional semantic embeddings, a TUI. deja is the opposite bet — one small Go binary, pure lexical, eight harnesses, zero setup — plus the memory-layer pieces around it: auto-recall, redaction, share, sync.

And from MemPalace / Mem0 / Letta? Those are memory platforms: embeddings, vector stores, capture hooks or APIs that record going forward. deja has no capture step at all — it indexes what your agents already wrote to disk, including months of history from before you installed it. They can coexist.

What about secrets already in my logs? They stay in the original harness files (that's your agent's data), but they don't enter deja's index, digests, shares or sync exports.

What about Windows? Builds exist, CI runs the suite on Windows; macOS/Linux are the battle-tested paths. Field reports welcome: #9.

Can I exclude a project? Not yet — planned as --exclude (#8). Today you can point DEJA_*_ROOT at a filtered copy.

How do I wipe everything?

deja uninstall --all
rm -rf ~/.cache/deja

Contributing

make build test lint — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Adding a harness starts in the parser registry. Current priorities and non-goals are in ROADMAP.md. Good first issues are labeled.

License

MIT © Vladislav Shulcz