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Engramory

An opinionated, zero-infrastructure memory protocol for small-scale, local, file-based agent memory — a strict curation discipline plus a validator (tools/engramory_doctor.py), loaded as standing rules (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / your host's rules file). It is not a database, a framework, or a relevance-loaded skill. Memory is a folder of small, human-readable markdown files plus one always-loaded index. No database, no embeddings, no server — just plain-text files you can open, read, edit, and diff in any editor (the live store itself stays git-ignored).

Engramory — coined from engram (the physical trace a memory leaves in the brain) + memory. Here: one file = one fact.

⚠️ Unrelated projects share this name. engram + memory is an obvious coinage and at least one other repository arrived at it independently. This project is only ever tinqiao-oss/engramory (npm: dsh-engramory); a same-named repo under a different owner is not a fork, a mirror, or a newer version of it.

🤖 Are you an AI agent, asked to install or check this? Start at AGENT-SETUP.md, not at the install steps below. It is the procedure for working out what your host can actually enforce, whether a store already exists, what you must not touch, and what to tell the user — the parts agents reliably get wrong when improvising.

Status: 0.12.1 — experimental. The hard index cap (a PreToolUse hook) is deterministic for the matched direct-edit tools (Edit | Write | MultiEdit) but NOT a global write guard (shell tools — Bash, PowerShell, a background Monitor command — plus MCP file tools, external editors, and sync clients bypass it); the discipline loads as standing rules the model follows, so it's best-effort, not guaranteed on every task (see SKILL.md §8). Assumes a single writer / serialized writes. Don't rely on it as a "mandatory, reliable, cross-agent" memory layer yet.

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What this is — and is NOT

Engramory is not a new memory architecture. The "markdown files + a small index loaded into context + the model curates it" pattern is now the mainstream shape for agent memory, and it ships in several places already. Engramory stands on:

• Claude Code native auto-memory — the same markdown-MEMORY.md-index + lazy detail-file pattern; its system prompt even uses the same user | feedback | project | reference type vocabulary (per anthropics/claude-code#58840; the public docs describe only the index + topic files). Engramory is a disciplined superset of this default.
• basic-memory — markdown source-of-truth, YAML frontmatter type, [[wikilink]] graph, local-first.
• obsidian-second-brain, claude-memory-compiler ("a loaded index beats vector search at personal scale"), and the broader family of markdown-memory skills.

What Engramory contributes is the opinionated bundle + the discipline, not the primitives. Do not claim novelty on markdown, frontmatter, wikilinks, a loaded index, one-file-per-fact notes, or curation hygiene — all are prior art.

What's actually differentiated

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