Quick start

This takes about ten minutes. At the end, Claude will have a memory, and you will have saved your first note and asked your first question.

What you need

• A Mac, Linux or Windows computer.
• Claude Code, or the Claude Desktop app.
• About 200 MB of free disk space for the program and its one-time download.

Step 1: Download memo-mcp

1. Open the releases page.

2. Download the file for your computer:

   Your computer	File name contains
   Mac with Apple silicon (M1 and newer)	darwin_arm64
   Mac with Intel	darwin_amd64
   Linux	linux_amd64 or linux_arm64
   Windows	windows_amd64

3. Unpack it. Inside is a single program called memo-mcp (or memo-mcp.exe on Windows).

4. Move it somewhere permanent, for example a bin folder in your home folder. Note the full path; you need it in the next step.

To check that it runs, open a terminal and type the path to the program followed by version:

~/bin/memo-mcp version

You should see a version number. On a Mac, if you see a warning that the developer cannot be verified, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Allow Anyway.

Step 2: Connect it to Claude

Choose a name for this memory. One memory per project works well, for example my-project.

Claude Code

Run this once in a terminal, with your own path and name:

claude mcp add memo --env MEMO_KB=my-project -- ~/bin/memo-mcp

Claude Desktop

Open Settings → Developer → Edit Config, add the memo entry below and save. Use the full path to the program; ~ does not work here.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "memo": {
      "command": "/Users/you/bin/memo-mcp",
      "env": { "MEMO_KB": "my-project" }
    }
  }
}

Then quit Claude Desktop completely and open it again.

Step 3: Check that Claude sees it

Start a new conversation and ask:

What is in my memo knowledge base?

Claude should answer that the memory is empty, or list what it holds. In Claude Code, the /mcp command also lists memo as connected.

The first start downloads a language model. It is about 140 MB, happens once, and takes a minute or two. Until it finishes, searching still works by matching words, and Claude may mention that search is “degraded”. Notes saved during that time are fully searchable once the download completes. This is the only time memo-mcp uses the internet.

Step 4: Save your first note

Tell Claude something worth keeping, and ask it to save it:

Save this to memo: we deploy on Tuesdays only, and the release owner runs the smoke tests before tagging.

Claude confirms it was saved and gives it an address that starts with memo://. That address is how you and Claude point at this exact note later.

You can also hand over a whole document:

Read docs/architecture.md and save it to memo as project documentation.

Step 5: Ask your first question

Start a new conversation, so Claude cannot simply remember the last one, and ask:

When do we release? Check memo.

Claude finds the note, answers, and names the source. To see how it decided, ask:

Why did that result come first?

You are set up

• Learn what to say day to day in Everyday use.
• Open the memory in a browser: Looking inside.
• If something did not work, see Questions and troubleshooting.