Fast retrieval. Higher accuracy. Lower cost.
Warning
🚧 Under heavy construction — memU is undergoing a major rework. APIs, CLI commands, and docs may change without notice. Things are expected to stabilize around July 15, 2026.
🤖 Agents: read
.claude/skills/memu/SKILL.mdand you canmemorize-workspaceandretrieve-workspaceright away.
memU compiles conversations, documents, code, images, audio, video, URLs, and tool traces into human-readable Markdown files (INDEX.md, MEMORY.md, SKILL.md). Agents traverse the tree and load only what the moment needs — instead of rescanning everything or stuffing long histories into every prompt.
await service.memorize_workspace(folder="./workspace")
context = await service.retrieve_workspace("What should I know about this user's launch preferences?")Or straight from the terminal — no code:
npx memu-cli memorize-workspace ./workspace
npx memu-cli retrieve-workspace "What should I know about this user's launch preferences?"That's it. Instead of one giant prompt about a person or their workspace, your agent gets three durable layers it can traverse:
workspace/
├── INDEX.md ← Index: a map of everything — raw sources and summaries
├── MEMORY.md ← Memory: an overview that links into memory/
├── SKILL.md ← Skill: an overview that links into skill/
├── resource/ ← the raw source files, copied verbatim
├── memory/
│ └── <topic>.md ← one memory file per topic: facts, preferences, goals, events
└── skill/
└── <name>.md ← one skill file per learned pattern, workflow, or mistake to avoid- Index (
INDEX.md) — a map of your memories: what exists, where it came from, and where to look first - Memory (
MEMORY.md) — personal facts, preferences, goals, events, and decisions extracted from source data - Skill (
SKILL.md) — auto-extracted from agent traces and refined on every workspace sync so the agent improves at recurring tasks
When you sync a folder with memorize_workspace, the top-level directory decides the treatment: files under chat/ become memory, files under agent/ become skills, and everything else is indexed as workspace context.
Three things make it different from stuffing everything into the prompt:
- Fast retrieval — walk to the right folder and rank the right files instead of scanning everything every time.
- Higher accuracy — scope by user, task, or session, and trace every item back to the exact conversation, document, image, or log it came from.
- Lower cost — retrieve compact, scoped context instead of reinjecting long histories, documents, logs, and media-derived text into every prompt.
- Yours to inspect — a human-readable file tree you can audit, edit, scope, and route through your own storage (
inmemory,sqlite,postgres) and LLM providers.
If you find memU useful or interesting, a GitHub Star ⭐️ would be greatly appreciated.
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| 🗂️ Multimodal Ingestion | Write conversations, documents, images, video, audio, URLs, logs, and local files into memory |
| 📁 Compiled Memory Workspace | Persist the Index, Skill, and Memory layers — folders (categories), files (items), source artifacts, links, summaries, and embeddings |
| 🧠 Typed Memory Extraction | Extract profile, event, knowledge, behavior, skill, and tool memories from raw sources |
| 🛠️ Self-Evolving Skills | Auto-extract reusable tool patterns and workflows from agent traces, then merge and refine them on every workspace sync instead of relearning |
| 🧭 Self-Organizing Folders | Auto-build categories, links, summaries, and embeddings without manual tagging |
| 🤖 Agent-Ready Retrieval | LLM-free retrieve_workspace() ranks memory segments, files, and source resources directly |
| 🔄 Incremental Workspace Sync | memorize_workspace() diffs a folder against a manifest — only changed files are (re)processed, deletions cascade |
| 🧱 Pluggable Storage | Use in-memory, SQLite, or Postgres backends with the same repository contracts |
| 🔀 Profile-Based LLM Routing | Route chat, embedding, vision, and transcription work through configurable LLM profiles |
| ⌨️ CLI | memu command (pip) and npx memu-cli (npm) — memorize and retrieve from the terminal or CI |
Every use case is the same loop: drop sources into a folder, sync it with memorize_workspace(), then ask with retrieve_workspace(). The sync is incremental (only changed files are reprocessed), and the top-level directory decides the treatment — chat/ → memory topics, agent/ → skills, everything else → indexed context.
Turn chat logs into user preferences, goals, events, decisions, and relationship context.
# workspace/chat/*.json — conversation logs become memory topic files
await service.memorize_workspace(folder="./workspace")
context = await service.retrieve_workspace("What should I remember about this user?")Convert docs, PR notes, logs, and design decisions into reusable project memory.
# docs, notes, and logs anywhere in the folder are captioned and indexed
await service.memorize_workspace(folder="./workspace")
context = await service.retrieve_workspace("How should I structure this module?")Extract searchable facts from documents, screenshots, images, videos, and audio notes.
# modality is inferred per file: .pdf/.docx/.pptx/.xlsx/.html (via MarkItDown —
# pip install 'memu-py[document]'), .png/.jpg, .mp3/.wav, .mp4/.mov, ...
await service.memorize_workspace(folder="./workspace")
context = await service.retrieve_workspace("What matters for the next research plan?")Turn execution traces into skills that tell future agents what worked and what to avoid.
# workspace/agent/*.txt — execution traces are distilled into skill files
await service.memorize_workspace(folder="./workspace")
context = await service.retrieve_workspace("Which tools worked for config editing?")The compiled workspace is easiest to read as two directions:
memorize_workspace()writes a folder into durable memory files, skill files, resource records, segments, links, and embeddings.retrieve_workspace()reads those layers directly, ranking segments first and rolling results up to the files and resources an agent should load.
Memory is stored in three representation layers:
| Layer | What it holds | Retrieval Role |
|---|---|---|
File (RecallFile) |
A synthesized memory topic or skill document | The unit returned to the agent — hit segments roll up to their file |
| Segment | Fine slices of a file (paragraph lines, skill descriptions) | The embedded search unit — queries rank segments first |
| Resource | The raw source artifact with its caption | Recall original context when synthesized summaries are not enough |
retrieve_workspace() embeds the query once, ranks segments and resources by similarity, and returns compact context with zero chat-LLM calls.
See docs/architecture.md for the runtime view of MemoryService, workflow pipelines, storage backends, and LLM routing, and docs/adr/ for the decision records behind the layered design.
The repo ships one Agent Skill — .claude/skills/memu/SKILL.md — that gives Claude Code (and any skills-compatible agent) the workspace pair. The agent decides when to use each direction:
- memorize (
memu memorize-workspace) — "remember this", "sync this folder into memory", finishing work worth persisting - retrieve (
memu retrieve-workspace) — "what do we know about…", starting a task with likely prior context
It works out of the box inside this repo. To use it in your own project, copy the skill folder into that project's .claude/skills/ (or ~/.claude/skills/ to enable it everywhere):
cp -r .claude/skills/memu /path/to/your-project/.claude/skills/The skill locates the CLI automatically (memu, uvx --from memu-py memu, or npx memu-cli) and keeps state in the project-local ./data/memu.sqlite3, so what one session memorizes the next can retrieve. For LangGraph agents, see the LangGraph integration instead.
👉 memu.so — Hosted API for managed ingestion, structured memory, and retrieval
For enterprise deployment: [email protected]
| Base URL | https://api.memu.so |
|---|---|
| Auth | Authorization: Bearer <token> |
| Method | Endpoint | Description |
|---|---|---|
POST |
/api/v3/memory/memorize |
Ingest raw data and build structured memory |
GET |
/api/v3/memory/memorize/status/{task_id} |
Check processing status |
POST |
/api/v3/memory/categories |
List auto-generated categories |
POST |
/api/v3/memory/retrieve |
Query memory for agent context |
From a clone of this repository:
uv sync
# or, for the full development setup:
make installTo install the published package instead:
pip install memu-py # library + `memu` CLI
# or from the JS ecosystem (thin launcher over memu-py, uses uvx/pipx automatically):
npx memu-cli --helpRequirements: Python 3.13+. The default examples use OpenAI, so set
OPENAI_API_KEYor pass another provider throughllm_profiles.
The memu command wraps the same service the library exposes. State persists in a local SQLite database (./data/memu.sqlite3 by default), so memorize in one invocation and retrieve in the next:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key
memu memorize-workspace ./workspace # diff-sync a folder (alias: memu sync)
memu retrieve-workspace "deploy checklist" # LLM-free embedding retrieval (alias: memu search)
memu export # rebuild the INDEX.md/MEMORY.md/SKILL.md treeEvery flag has a MEMU_* environment variable (--provider/MEMU_LLM_PROVIDER, --model/MEMU_CHAT_MODEL, --db/MEMU_DB, ...) — run memu <command> --help for the full list. --db accepts a SQLite path, a postgres:// DSN, or :memory:.
Run an in-memory smoke script:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key
cd tests
uv run python test_inmemory.pyRun with PostgreSQL + pgvector:
uv sync --extra postgres
docker run -d --name memu-postgres \
-e POSTGRES_USER=postgres \
-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres \
-e POSTGRES_DB=memu \
-p 5432:5432 \
pgvector/pgvector:pg16
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key
export POSTGRES_DSN=postgresql+psycopg://postgres:[email protected]:5432/memu
cd tests
uv run python test_postgres.pyfrom memu import MemoryService
service = MemoryService(
llm_profiles={
"default": {
"base_url": "https://dashscope.aliyuncs.com/compatible-mode/v1",
"api_key": "your_key",
"chat_model": "qwen3-max",
"client_backend": "sdk"
},
"embedding": {
"base_url": "https://api.voyageai.com/v1",
"api_key": "your_key",
"embed_model": "voyage-3.5-lite"
}
},
)from memu import MemoryService
service = MemoryService(
llm_profiles={
"default": {
"provider": "openrouter",
"client_backend": "httpx",
"base_url": "https://openrouter.ai",
"api_key": "your_key",
"chat_model": "anthropic/claude-3.5-sonnet",
"embed_model": "openai/text-embedding-3-small",
},
},
database_config={"metadata_store": {"provider": "inmemory"}},
)The primary API pair is memorize_workspace() / retrieve_workspace() — folder in, ranked context out.
result = await service.memorize_workspace(
folder="./workspace", # scanned recursively; modality inferred per file
user={"user_id": "123"}, # optional scope
)
# Returns the diff plus what changed:
# { "added": [...], "modified": [...], "deleted": [...],
# "resources": [...], "entries": [...], "files": [...] }- Diffs the folder against a sidecar
.memu_manifest.json— only added/modified files are processed, memory from deleted files is cascade-removed - Routes by top-level directory:
chat/→ memory files,agent/→ skill files, everything else → indexed workspace context - Rebuilds the markdown memory tree (
INDEX.md/MEMORY.md/SKILL.md) whenmemory_files_config.enabled=True
result = await service.retrieve_workspace(
"deploy checklist",
where={"user_id": "123"},
)
# Returns:
# { "segments": [...], # embedded slices ranked by similarity
# "files": [...], # the memory/skill files those segments roll up to
# "resources": [...] } # workspace resources ranked by similarityThe query is embedded once and ranked by vector similarity — no intention routing, no query rewriting, no sufficiency checks, zero LLM calls. Use it for high-frequency lookups where latency and cost matter more than deep reasoning.
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key
uv run python examples/example_1_conversation_memory.pyAutomatically extracts preferences, builds relationship models, and surfaces relevant context in future conversations.
uv run python examples/example_2_skill_extraction.pyMonitors agent actions, identifies patterns in successes and failures, auto-generates skill guides from experience.
uv run python examples/example_3_multimodal_memory.pyCross-references text, images, and documents automatically into a unified memory layer.
memU achieves 92.09% average accuracy on the Locomo benchmark across all reasoning tasks.
View detailed results: memU-experiment
| Repository | Description |
|---|---|
| memU | Personal memory as files — fast retrieval, higher accuracy, lower cost |
| memU-server | Backend with real-time sync and webhook triggers |
| memU-ui | Visual dashboard for browsing and monitoring memory |
Quick Links:
# Fork and clone
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/memU.git
cd memU
# Install dev dependencies
make install
# Run quality checks before submitting
make checkSee CONTRIBUTING.md for full guidelines.
Prerequisites: Python 3.13+, uv, Git
- GitHub Issues: Report bugs & request features
- Discord: Join the community
- X (Twitter): Follow @memU_ai
- Contact: [email protected]
⭐ Star us on GitHub to get notified about new releases!



