RAWThink

Your AI assistant forgets everything between sessions. RAWThink fixes that.

Persistent memory for Claude Code — hybrid search, knowledge graph, session lifecycle. Think of it as a second brain that grows with every conversation.

The Problem

Claude Code is stateless. Every session starts from zero. You explain the same context, re-establish the same decisions, re-discover the same insights. Yesterday's breakthrough is today's cold start.

RAWThink gives your AI a memory that persists, decays naturally, and revises itself when you change your mind. It's a 15-tool MCP server that turns Claude Code into a long-term thinking partner.

Article

Read the full story: Your AI Doesn't Remember You

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• Docker (for Qdrant vector database)
• Ollama (for local embeddings)
• Node.js (for the SessionStart hook)

Install & set up

pip install rawthink-mcp
rawthink-install              # creates project dir with vault, configs, and starter files
cd ~/rawthink-vault           # go to your project directory
docker compose up -d          # start Qdrant (docker-compose.yml is here)
ollama pull bge-m3            # download embedding model

Restart Claude Code. Done.

rawthink-install creates a self-contained project directory at ~/rawthink-vault with vault structure, CLAUDE.md, THINKING_DIRECTIVES.md, SETUP.md, docker-compose.yml, and /rtclose command. Run rawthink-install --vault ~/my-vault to customize the location.

<details> <summary>Manual setup (without rawthink-install)</summary>

Add to your ~/.claude.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rawthink": {
      "command": "rawthink-mcp",
      "env": {
        "RAWTHINK_VAULT": "/path/to/your/vault"
      }
    }
  }
}

Create vault structure:

mkdir -p vault/{sessions,qnotes,archive/raw,outputs}

Install from source instead of PyPI:

git clone https://github.com/ygtalp/rawthink-mcp.git
cd rawthink-mcp
pip install -e .

</details>

Your First Session

Your vault starts empty — that's the point. Open Claude Code and start talking:

You:   "We're building a REST API. Let's use PostgreSQL with connection pooling."
Claude: [responds with technical discussion]

You:   "/qnote we decided on PostgreSQL + pgBouncer for the API layer"
       → saved to your vault as a searchable quick note

You:   "/rtclose"
       → Session exported, entities extracted, handoff written

Next session, Claude loads the handoff automatically and picks up where you left off. After a few sessions, your vault looks like this:

> search_thoughts("how did we handle the database?")

1. [2025-03-15_002] API Architecture Decisions        score: 0.74
   Decided on PostgreSQL + pgBouncer for connection pooling.
   Key insight: pool_mode=transaction for serverless...

2. [2025-03-22_001] Performance Review                 score: 0.61
   Revisited DB strategy — added read replicas for
   reporting queries, write primary stays single-node...

> read_graph(summary=True)

Knowledge Graph: 42 entities, 38 relations

  decision (5)
  - postgres-connection-pooling (3 obs) act=0.97
  - api-versioning-strategy    (4 obs) act=0.85
  - auth-jwt-vs-session        (2 obs) act=0.72
  concept (8)
  - cqrs-pattern               (3 obs) act=0.91
  - event-sourcing             (5 obs) act=0.88
  ...

What It Does

Three-layer memory

1. Hot cache (MEMORY.md) — loaded every session, essential context
2. Knowledge graph (JSONL) — entities, relations, temporal observations with belief revision
3. Semantic search (Qdrant) — hybrid dense + BM25 across all sessions and qnotes

Session lifecycle

Session start (handoff loads) → Think together → /rtclose →
JSONL export + entity extraction + handoff for next session

Key capabilities

• Hybrid search: BGE-M3 dense embeddings + BM25 sparse vectors, fused with RRF
• Belief revision: observations can be invalidated, superseded, and tracked over time
• Activation decay: unused knowledge fades (~23-day half-life), accessed knowledge stays hot
• Epistemic typing: mark entities as assertion, hypothesis, or speculation
• Multi-terminal safe: parallel sessions don't overwrite each other's handoffs
• Thinking directives: structured discipline for human-AI thinking partnerships
• Ollama fallback: embedding cache for when Ollama is temporarily unavailable

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Claude Code                    │
│              (MCP Client)                       │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                   │ MCP (stdio)
┌──────────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐
│                rawthink                         │
│           (FastMCP Server)                      │
│                                                 │
│  ┌─────────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌────────────┐  │
│  │   Indexer   │  │  Graph   │  │  Chunker   │  │
│  │ (Qdrant +   │  │ (JSONL   │  │ (Markdown  │  │
│  │  Ollama)    │  │  KG)     │  │  splitter) │  │
│  └──────┬──────┘  └────┬─────┘  └────────────┘  │
│         │              │                        │
│  ┌──────▼──────┐  ┌────▼─────┐                  │
│  │   Qdrant    │  │ memory   │                  │
│  │  (Docker)   │  │ .jsonl   │                  │
│  └─────────────┘  └──────────┘                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                   │
        ┌──────────▼──────────┐
        │       Vault         │
        │  sessions/ qnotes/  │
        │  archive/  outputs/ │
        └─────────────────────┘

MCP Tools

Search (5 tools)

Tool	Description
search_thoughts	Hybrid semantic + keyword search across vault
get_session	Retrieve full session content by ID
get_related	Quick related thoughts lookup (session-level)
store_thought	Store a new thought as a qnote
reindex	Re-index vault content into Qdrant

Knowledge Graph (10 tools)

Tool	Description
search_nodes	Search entities by name, type, and observations
create_entities	Create/merge entities with epistemic typing
create_relations	Create relations (controlled vocabulary)
add_observations	Add temporal observations to entities
invalidate_observations	Mark observations as invalidated (belief revision)
delete_entities	Delete entities and their relations
delete_observations	Remove specific observations
delete_relations	Remove specific relations
read_graph	Read full graph with pagination + summary mode
open_nodes	Open specific entities with their relations

How It's Different

RAWThink is not a codebase analyzer or a simple key-value memory. It's a living knowledge system designed for thinking partnerships.

	RAWThink	Basic MCP Memory	Codebase Analyzers
Search	Hybrid (dense + BM25 + RRF)	Key lookup	Graph query
Knowledge	Temporal KG with belief revision	Flat key-value	Static AST graph
Memory decay	Activation decay (~23 days)	None	None
Session lifecycle	Full (export, extract, handoff)	None	None
Epistemic tracking	assertion/hypothesis/speculation	None	extracted/inferred/ambiguous
Designed for	Thinking & decision memory	Simple facts	Code structure

Why JSONL?

Human-readable, git-diffable, zero dependency. At 120 entities the graph loads in <50ms. At 10K entities ~1.4s. The optimization path is clear: mtime cache for repeated reads, lazy writes for activation updates, SQLite migration at 50K+ entities.

Configuration

All settings via environment variables or rawthink_mcp/config.py:

Setting	Env Var	Default	Description
Vault path	RAWTHINK_VAULT	../vault	Path to vault directory
Qdrant URL	QDRANT_URL	http://localhost:6333	Qdrant server URL
Qdrant path	QDRANT_PATH	—	Set for embedded Qdrant (no Docker)
Ollama URL	OLLAMA_URL	http://localhost:11434	Ollama server URL
Embedding model	OLLAMA_MODEL	bge-m3	Ollama embedding model
KG file	MEMORY_FILE_PATH	../vault/memory.jsonl	Knowledge graph file path
Turkish normalization	RAWTHINK_TURKISH_NORMALIZATION	false	Set 1 or true to enable
Decay rate	—	0.03	Activation decay (~23-day half-life)

Session Lifecycle

RAWThink includes a session close command (/rtclose) that:

1. Exports the current conversation to clean markdown + full transcript + HTML
2. Extracts key entities and relations into the knowledge graph
3. Writes a project-specific handoff file for the next session
4. Updates MEMORY.md with essential context

A SessionStart hook (rawthink-handoff.js) runs when Claude Code starts and loads the most recent handoff + recent qnotes into context automatically.

Session lifecycle currently requires Claude Code. MCP-native session tools are planned for v0.2.

Customization

CLAUDE.md

Edit CLAUDE.md to customize the thinking companion's behavior:

• Role and tone
• Active modes (free-flow, socratic, debate, synthesis, deep-dive, technical, galaxy-brain)
• Epistemic transparency format
• Meta-commands

THINKING_DIRECTIVES.md

Structured discipline for the thinking partnership. Every rule was born from a violation — don't follow mechanically, understand why each exists. Customize to match your workflow.

Obsidian (optional)

Open your vault directory in Obsidian to browse sessions and qnotes visually. The vault uses standard markdown with YAML frontmatter — no plugins needed.

Entity Types

Default entity type is "concept". Common types: concept, decision, rule, insight, question, project.

Relation Types

Canonical types (non-standard accepted with warning): supports, contradicts, evolved_into, depends_on, exemplifies, part_of, caused_by, enables, supersedes, related_to

Roadmap

• Interactive knowledge graph visualization
• Wiki export (agent-browsable markdown per entity)
• .rawthinkignore for vault indexing control
• Graph traversal queries (unexpected connections, multi-hop)
• SQLite backend for 50K+ entities
• MCP-native session tools (no Claude Code dependency)
• Configurable language normalization

License

MIT — see LICENSE.