Norn

Persistent, visible memory for AI coding agents.

Live site · Releases · Quickstart

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Your AI forgets you every session. Norn is a local MCP server that remembers your decisions, preferences, and project context across every session and project, for Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP client. Unlike most memory tools it is fully local and fully inspectable: a dashboard lets you see exactly what it stored and forget anything you do not want.

Quickstart

Requires Node 20+. Add Norn to Claude Code in one line, no clone:

claude mcp add norn -- npx -y @samad001z/norn-server

For Cursor, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client, use the standard config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "norn": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@samad001z/norn-server"]
    }
  }
}

Restart your agent. Norn registers four tools: remember, recall, forget, list.

The first remember or recall downloads a local embedding model (all-MiniLM-L6-v2, ~25 MB) once, then runs fully offline.

<details> <summary>Or run from source</summary>

git clone https://github.com/samad001z/Norn.git
cd Norn
npm install
npm run build -w @samad001z/norn-core && npm run build -w @samad001z/norn-server
claude mcp add norn -- node "$(pwd)/server/dist/index.js"

</details>

See it work

Memory survives across sessions, and recall is semantic: it matches meaning, not keywords.

Session 1

You: Remember that we deploy to production from the main branch on Vercel.

Claude calls remember("deploy to production from the main branch on Vercel", project: "acme")

Session 2, the next day, in a fresh context window

You: How do we ship to prod?

Claude calls recall("how do we ship to prod")

Norn returns "Deploy to production from the main branch on Vercel." even though the query shares no keywords with the stored note.

How it works

Three local pieces share one local database:

Claude Code / Cursor  ──MCP (stdio)──►  Norn MCP server  ┐
                                                          ├──►  ~/.norn/norn.db
        Dashboard (Next.js)  ────────────────────────────┘     (SQLite + sqlite-vec)

• MCP server (/server): exposes remember, recall, forget, list over stdio.
• Store (/core): SQLite + sqlite-vec, with embeddings from a local MiniLM model (no API key). recall blends semantic similarity with recency and trims results to a token budget; remember dedupes near-identical notes.
• Dashboard (/web): a Next.js app to browse and manage everything.

All three default to the same file, ~/.norn/norn.db (override with NORN_DB_PATH), so a memory written by your agent appears in the dashboard, and a memory you forget in the dashboard is gone for the agent too.

Features

• Remembers across sessions and projects. Stop re-pasting CLAUDE.md by hand.
• See everything it knows. No black box: every memory is visible.
• Forget anything, with undo. Full control over what it keeps.
• Lives in your tools over MCP. Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP client.
• Local-first. Your context, the embedding model, and the database all stay on your machine.

Privacy

Local by default. The store is a SQLite file on your disk, the embedding model runs on your machine, and nothing leaves it: no account, no API key, no telemetry. Delete ~/.norn/norn.db and the memory is gone.

Manage your memories

The dashboard lets you browse by project, search, and forget any memory (with undo).

npm run dev:web
# open http://localhost:3000/app

You can also inspect the store from the command line:

npm run cli -w @samad001z/norn-core -- list
npm run cli -w @samad001z/norn-core -- recall "how do we deploy"

Roadmap

• Swappable embedding backends (Ollama, OpenAI-compatible) behind the existing Embedder interface.
• Create and edit memories from the dashboard, not just browse and forget.
• Optional end-to-end encrypted sync, off by default.
• More editor and MCP-client integrations.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md. The short version:

npm install
npm run build
npm test -w @samad001z/norn-core

License

MIT. See LICENSE.