I shipped 6 versions of my Claude Code memory daemon in 36 hours — here's what changed and why

Two days ago I had a daemon that captured Claude Code session JSONLs and let you grep them. Today it has cloud sync, hot-reload, AI-powered recall via MCP, a web dashboard, and a $99 team tier.

This is the changelog, why each ship happened, and what it tells you about what users actually want from a "memory layer" tool.

The setup

eidetic-daemon ships at github.com/eidetic-works/eidetic-daemon. ~3K lines of Go. Captures every Claude Code session JSONL via fsnotify, stores in SQLite with FTS5, exposes over UDS + MCP. Free + MIT. The premium tier ($29/mo Pro, $99/mo Team) adds managed Cloudflare R2 sync.

Two days ago I had 277K engrams from my own sessions across 8 months. I'd shipped the free distribution (Homebrew tap, dev.to article, X replies). The conversion bottleneck was Pro onboarding friction: "drop sync.json, restart daemon, hope it works" was 3 steps too many.

Here's the 6-ship sprint, oldest first.

v0.0.32: --restore flag

eideticd --restore
# ✓ Downloaded 3.3 MB engrams.db from cloud backup
# key: engrams/macbook-m2/engrams-1748300000000.db
# previous db saved to ~/.eidetic/engrams.db.bak
# restart eideticd to use the restored database

The landing copy promised "restore on a new machine in 60 seconds." The implementation didn't exist yet — I'd shipped the upload path but never the download. So I built the Worker /download endpoint, the RestoreFromConfig Go function (runs before store.Open to avoid SQLite write-lock contention), and atomic file replacement with .bak backup.

3 tests. ~80 LOC. Cost: 45 minutes. Lesson: don't put copy on your landing page that doesn't have a curl behind it.

v0.0.33: sync-state persistence

After --sync-now ran successfully, you had no way to tell when it last fired. The daemon forgot across restarts. --stats now shows a cloud sync block:

  cloud sync:
    last sync:  2026-05-20 09:13:42
    last key:   engrams/macbook-m2/engrams-...
    last size:  3.3 MB

State persists to sync-state.json in dataDir, atomic write (tmp → rename, 0600). Cost: 20 minutes.

v0.0.34: eideticd --check

This is a Pro-onboarding-debug tool. New customer drops sync.json, daemon doesn't sync, customer emails support. What's the first thing I want them to run?

$ eideticd --check
eideticd v0.0.34 — sync check

  worker_url: https://eidetic-sync.morning-lake-f944.workers.dev
  device_id:  customer-mac-01
  interval:   60 min (default)
  worker:     ✓ reachable (200 OK)
  last sync:  2026-05-20 09:13 (3m ago)

  status: ✓ sync healthy

If the worker's down: worker: ✗ unreachable: .... If the key's wrong: worker: ✗ auth failed (401). Exit code 1 on failure so you can script it.

Cost: 30 minutes. The cheapest customer support feature is one that prevents the ticket.

v0.0.35: sync.json hot-reload

This was the friction killer. Before: drop sync.json → launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/works.eidetic.eideticd. After: drop sync.json, done.

fsnotify on the dataDir, 300ms debounce, dynamically swap the Syncer behind an RWMutex. Initial upload fires automatically to confirm.

sync: hot-reload — config applied (worker=https://eidetic-sync.morning-lake-f944.workers.dev device=macbook-m2)
sync: hot-reload initial upload complete

Lesson: the step you ask the user to do "just once" is the one they get wrong. Remove the step.

v0.0.36: --backups history

You can't trust a backup you can't see. SyncState got a ring buffer (last 10 uploads), --backups prints them:

$ eideticd --backups
eideticd v0.0.36 — cloud backup history

  2026-05-20 09:13  engrams/macbook-m2/engrams-...  (3.3 MB)
  2026-05-20 08:13  engrams/macbook-m2/engrams-...  (3.3 MB)
  2026-05-20 07:13  engrams/macbook-m2/engrams-...  (3.3 MB)
  ...

Ring buffer cap, newest first, atomic write. 1 new test verifies the cap. Cost: 25 minutes.

v0.0.5 (MCP) + v0.0.38 (HTTP): nucleus_ask

This is the killer feature. The landing copy promised "AI-powered recall coming soon." This is it.

# From any MCP client (Claude Code, Cursor, Cline):
nucleus_ask(question="What was that Postgres trick I learned last week?")

The tool extracts keywords from the question (stop-word stripped, OR-joined), retrieves top-10 engrams via FTS5, returns them wrapped in answer-scaffolding:

{
  "question": "What was that Postgres trick I learned?",
  "fts_query": "postgres OR trick OR learned",
  "instructions": "You are answering the question above using ONLY the engram excerpts below. Cite the surface + timestamp when you reference one. If the engrams don't answer the question, say so honestly — do NOT fabricate.",
  "engrams": [...]
}

The "AI" is the host LLM (your Claude Code session). Your engrams never leave your machine. No external API calls, no embeddings service, no GPU. Just FTS5 retrieval + careful prompt framing.

I also exposed it as GET /ask?question=... on the daemon's HTTP API so the web dashboard (next ship) can call it without MCP.

7 unit tests on the keyword extraction. 4 HTTP integration tests. Total cost: ~3h including the dashboard wiring.

Bonus: the web dashboard

Single-page Astro at /dashboard. Paste your bridge URL + bearer token. Browse engrams, search, filter by surface. localStorage-persisted creds (never POSTed anywhere). Talks only to your daemon — no proxy.

What I learned shipping 6 versions in 36 hours

1. Every gap between "landing promises" and "code works" loses you the customer. Don't write copy you can't ship in 48h.
2. The cheapest support ticket is one you prevent. --check will save me hours.
3. The "just once" step is the friction. Hot-reload was the highest-leverage ship — it removed the moment a customer thinks "is this thing even on?"
4. AI features don't need an LLM call. Retrieval + prompt framing is 90% of the value. The user's host LLM does the synthesis. Bonus: your data stays local.
5. Tests are cheap. All 6 ships have integration coverage. I haven't introduced a regression yet.

If you want to try it: brew tap eidetic-works/nucleus && brew install eideticd && eideticd -install and you're capturing in 30 seconds.

If you want cloud sync: there's a $29/mo Pro tier at eideticworks.gumroad.com/l/eidetic-pro. First 50 keep this price forever.

Either way, the source is at github.com/eidetic-works/eidetic-daemon. PRs welcome.

— Lokesh / Eidetic Works