agent-recall: Local SQLite MCP for Persistent Claude Code Memory

Solving Claude Code's Session Memory Problem

Claude Code forgets everything between sessions, requiring users to re-explain team details, decisions, and blockers. While CLAUDE.md works for single projects, it becomes messy across multiple projects with conflicting context.

agent-recall addresses this with a local SQLite-based memory layer that persists across sessions without cloud dependencies.

How It Works

• Single SQLite file in WAL mode - no cloud, no vector DB, nothing leaves your machine
• 9 MCP tools that let Claude save entities, relationships, and observations as you work
• At session start, an LLM generates a structured briefing covering key people, recent decisions, and active blockers instead of dumping raw data
• Versioned slot history - old values get archived, not overwritten

Key Features

Compared to claude-memory-mcp (which is great for free-form memories), agent-recall offers:

• Entity-relation model for structured data
• Scoped visibility to control which project sees what context
• LLM-summarized briefings rather than loading raw facts into context

Setup

Installation is straightforward:

pip install 'agent-recall[mcp]'

Then add the server to your .mcp.json configuration file. The tool is MIT licensed with 321 tests and was developed from running approximately 30 agents daily for work.

The author raises an interesting question about implementation approaches: are LLM-summarized briefings actually better than loading raw facts into context? This reflects ongoing experimentation in the MCP ecosystem about optimal memory management strategies.