Engram MCP server

Engram

An engram is the hypothetical physical trace of memory in neural tissue — the biochemical change that encodes what we've learned.

Local-first cognitive memory system that transforms raw LLM conversation history into structured, consolidated knowledge. Unlike traditional conversation search (which treats sessions as documents to retrieve), Engram mimics human memory architecture: episodic memories are captured, consolidated into semantic knowledge during "dream state" processing, and emergent connections surface through graph analysis — much like how a Zettelkasten's backlinks reveal Maps of Content that no individual note anticipated.

Designed as an MCP server for Claude Code and other LLM agents, with CLI and web visualization interfaces.

Install & first run

Prerequisites

background consolidation ships an installer for each (launchd, systemd user timer, Task Scheduler); see the platform matrix below.

• Node.js 22 or newer (node --version)
• macOS, Linux, or Windows for the CLI, MCP server, and web visualizer. Scheduled

• Claude Code if you want engram sync to ingest your conversation history from ~/.claude/projects
• At least one LLM provider for extraction and dream consolidation (see Configuration). Search, remember, and the web visualizer work without one.

Quick start — three commands

npx @devinmlowe/engram preflight    # is this node/platform/arch/libc covered by prebuilt native modules? (fix per OS if not)
npm install -g @devinmlowe/engram   # puts `engram` on your PATH; the postinstall hook runs the same preflight
engram setup                        # doctor → init → sync (asked) → register every host present → install the three services → doctor --fix → one real extraction → summary

engram setup walks a bare install to running and ends by telling you which LLM tier did the extraction (extraction smoke: tier=ollama memories=3). Every step prints what it did and the manual command it stands for, so nothing is hidden. It installs all three services — the MCP HTTP daemon, the nightly dream timer and the web visualizer (port 3001, loopback) — by default (decision #62); --no-daemons or --daemons=mcp,dream narrows that, --host claude narrows host registration, --no-sync / --sync skip or force indexing, --no-smoke skips the extraction, --yes answers every question for scripts (the Linux loginctl enable-linger prompt is never implied), --json prints the result. With no LLM provider configured the dream timer is still installed and setup ends with [warn] dream timer installed but no LLM tier is reachable … naming the variables to set — exit 0; only a required doctor failure (or a failed init) exits 1. Later, engram doctor --fix repairs whatever is red — the service env file, a model cache inside node_modules, a missing Ollama model (asked first), a stopped MCP daemon, an unregistered host — printing the manual equivalent of each; a second run says nothing to fix. See CLI and docs/api-reference.md.

The same, by hand

engram mcp install claude           # registers engram with Claude Code (codex | cursor | hermes | --all); restart the host

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.