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Nevals

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Local Agent Memory Without Docker: amem + MCP (facts stay in ~/.amem)

Coding agents forget you between chats. Preferences, decisions, and “don’t do that again” notes vanish unless you paste them back in.

I wanted something simpler than spinning up Docker, Postgres, and an embedding stack just so an agent can remember my name.

That’s amem: local agent memory over MCP. Facts live in ~/.amem on your machine. Free to start. No telemetry.

The problem

Every new agent thread starts cold:

  • Who am I building for?
  • What did we already decide?
  • Which tools are connected?

You either re-explain, or you trust a cloud memory product with your context. Neither felt right for day-to-day Cursor / Claude / MCP workflows.

What amem does

amem is a local memory layer your agent can call:

  1. amem_context — pull compact relevant facts before exploring or prompting
  2. amem_remember — store one durable sentence after a real outcome (preference, decision, recipe)

Memory stays on disk. You can browse it in a local UI.

Quick start

Go to this link

Node 20+:


bash
npx @iamem/amem setup

or globally 
npm i -g @iamem/amem && amem setup

then 
amem ui or amem app

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