About agentmemory-architecture
A technical overview of agentmemory, a local memory server for coding agents. It explains the iii engine, hybrid retrieval, memory lifecycle, storage, and the real-time viewer.
Key features
- 01BM25 and vector retrieval
- 02Graph-based retrieval expansion
- 03Memory capture and lifecycle
- 04Local embeddings option
- 05Real-time web viewer
Use cases
- 01Understand the system architecture
- 02Choose retrieval and embedding settings
- 03Inspect memory capture during sessions
MCP support
agentmemory serves memories over MCP as well as REST. See agentmemory-mcp-tools for its MCP surface.
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/ / github.com/ rohitg00/ agentmemory --skill agentmemory-architectureAfter installing, type/agentmemory-architecturein Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Bundled filesTROUBLESHOOTING.md
Details
From the project READMEagentmemory is a memory server for coding agents. It runs locally, captures observations, indexes them for hybrid retrieval, and serves them back over REST and MCP. Worker Compose runs the pinned iii engine with AgentMemory and the registry state and http workers. The state worker uses a file-backed KV store by default, with Redis available by configuration; it is not SQLite.
iii primitives
Everything is a function, a trigger, or worker state on the iii engine. There is no separate plugin system; the worker registers functions (mem::*) and HTTP triggers (api::*) and the engine routes calls. agentmemory does not bypass iii; new capability is a new function plus a trigger.
Retrieval model
Recall combines BM25 keyword search with configured vector similarity and graph expansion. A clean installation without an embedding provider uses BM25 without an API key. Set EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=local to enable on-device embeddings, which may download a model, or configure a remote provider. LLM compression and summaries require a configured provider and their relevant options.
Storage and lifecycle
Memories carry content, concepts, files, importance, and timestamps, grouped into sessions and optionally linked to commits. A lifecycle of capture, compress, consolidate, and forget keeps the store useful over time rather than letting it grow unbounded.
Ports
REST defaults to port 3111, the viewer to 3113, and the internal engine WebSocket to 49134. Use --port <N> or --instance <N> to select another local runtime.
Viewer
A real-time web viewer at http://localhost:3113 shows memory building as sessions run, with authenticated SSE updates over the REST port. Useful for demos and for confirming capture is working.
See also
- agentmemory-mcp-tools and agentmemory-rest-api for the surfaces.
- agentmemory-hooks for automatic capture.
- agentmemory-config for ports and feature flags.