memo-mcp operator guide
This guide is for the people who install, configure, tune and run memo-mcp. It is written for readers comfortable with a terminal, SQLite, environment variables and Prometheus.
memo-mcp is a single, pure-Go binary. It exposes a knowledge base to AI agents over the Model Context Protocol (MCP) on stdio. It stores everything in one SQLite file per knowledge base, and it ships with a CLI and a read-only web UI over the same store. There is no daemon to deploy, no external database and no network dependency after a one-time model download.
What you will find here
| Part | Read it when you need to… |
|---|---|
| I. How it works | Understand the processes, the data model, the search pipeline and the security boundaries |
| II. Install and deploy | Install, connect MCP clients, lay out several knowledge bases, upgrade, run offline |
| III. Configuration reference | Look up an environment variable, a command, a flag, the overrides file or a path on disk |
| IV. Retrieval tuning | Change ranking, switch embedding models, try the reranker, and measure whether a change helped |
| V. Knowledge lifecycle | Administer ingest, facts, trust, the graph index, compaction and deletion |
| VI. Monitoring and observability | Scrape metrics, write alerts, read logs, use the call log |
| VII. Operations | Back up, verify, size, export, troubleshoot, release |
Conventions
- Commands are shown as
memo-mcp <command>. Every command reads the same environment (MEMO_HOME,MEMO_KB, …), so set it the same way the MCP client does. - “Knowledge base” (KB) means one SQLite file. A “namespace” is a label inside one file.
- Addresses such as
memo://chunk/42identify records; every CLI command and the UI accept them. - Defaults quoted here are the shipped values for v1.4.
memo-mcp profiles showandmemo-mcp --helpprint the live values for your build.
Deeper references
This guide states what to do and what it costs. The design documents explain why:
- Architecture: the 1.x contract, formulas and defaults.
- Schema: every table and column, trust transitions, time rules.
- Eval reports: measured quality and cost per release.
Looking for the non-technical introduction? See the user guide.