Your model forgets yesterday's architecture decisions. Your agent drops customer context between runs. Your coding assistant can't recall why you chose Postgres over DynamoDB. Teams paste the same background into Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT, and custom bots — and knowledge still drifts.
Persistent coding memory for AI assistants. MCP stdio, hybrid search, graph, context.
AI models are getting cheaper. Context windows are getting larger. Agents are getting capable.
But AI still forgets.
The bottleneck is no longer reasoning. It's memory — durable, structured, retrievable, and owned by you.
Every serious application eventually needed a database. Every serious AI system will need a brain layer: persistent intelligence that sits between your models and your storage — independent of any single vendor, IDE, or agent framework.
AI should remember. Developers should own that memory.
Ratary exists to be that layer. Applications bring models. Ratary brings the brain.
What Ratary is
What is Ratary?
Ratary is an AI Brain Platform — infrastructure that gives AI:
Prerequisites: Node.js 24 · SQL metadata store (pick one — Postgres is the template default)
Path A — PostgreSQL (npm + local or Docker)
git clone https://github.com/ontorata/ratary.git
cd ratary && npm install
cp .env.example .env # Set AUTH_SECRET + DATABASE_URL — see .env.example QUICK START
npm run db:apply-postgres-schema
npm run setup # wire Ratary MCP for Cursor, Claude Code, …
npm run dev
Or use Docker: docker compose --profile postgres up --build — see docs/DOCKER.md.
Path B — Cloudflare D1
git clone https://github.com/ontorata/ratary.git
cd ratary && npm install
cp .env.example .env # Set AUTH_SECRET + SQL_PROVIDER=d1 + CLOUDFLARE_* / D1_*
npm run db:migrate
npm run setup
npm run dev
The Visual architecture diagram shows logical layers inside Ratary Server. This diagram shows repository and product relationships — what ships in this repo, what connects to it, and what lives in sibling Ontorata repositories. Both views describe the same platform from different angles.
Throughout this README, Ratary MCP means the official memory MCP implementation (stdio in this repo · npm @ratary/mcp-server for hosted REST). It is not the same as Ontorata MCP (ecosystem gateway — separate repo).
Use Ratary MCP for direct memory access. Use Ontorata MCP for one MCP entry point across the Ontorata stack. Both use Ratary Server as source of truth.
What Ratary is not
How is Ratary different from alternatives?
Vector DB
Memory API
RAG
Agent framework
Ratary
Primary job
Similarity search
Key-value recall
Document Q&A
Tool orchestration
Durable AI memory
Structured knowledge & graph
❌
⚠️
❌
⚠️
✅
MCP-native IDE integration
❌
⚠️
❌
⚠️
✅
Token-efficient context assembly
❌
⚠️
❌
⚠️
✅
Self-host & data sovereignty
✅
⚠️
⚠️
⚠️
✅
Clear agent boundary
N/A
⚠️
N/A
❌ bundled
✅ substrate only
Ratary complements your stack — it does not replace pgvector, LangGraph, or your agent of choice. See the Capability matrix for a feature-level comparison.
If you only use…
You get…
What you miss
pgvector
Embedding similarity
Structured memory, graph, MCP, context packing
Mem0
Fast hosted memory API
Full self-host, hybrid retrieval, enterprise adapters
Letta
Agent + memory bundled
Your agent stays yours — Ratary is substrate, not runtime
LangGraph
Workflow & tool routing
Shared durable memory across sessions and clients
RAG
Document chunks
Evolving memory — decisions, handoffs, relations
Visual architecture
How is Ratary Server structured internally?
This diagram shows the logical internal architecture of Ratary — how memory, knowledge, retrieval, and storage layers compose inside the platform. It is not a repository or product map.
For repository and product relationships (SDK, CLI, Ratary MCP, Ontorata ecosystem repos), see Ecosystem — a separate diagram, same platform, different perspective.
How Ratary works
What happens to a memory after you save it?
Write Enrich Retrieve Learn Reuse
│ │ │ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
Save via Summarize, Rank & pack Signals, Same memory
Ratary MCP/REST embed, link context for consolidate, powers every
relations your prompt evolve client
Write — Persist memory through Ratary MCP or REST.
Enrich — Summarize, embed, and relate — asynchronously.
Retrieve — Assemble the smallest useful context slice.
Learn — Optional signals and consolidation improve recall over time.
Reuse — One brain across IDEs, agents, and APIs.
Core capabilities
What can Ratary Server do today?
Memory intelligence
Durable memories with summaries, codenames, favorites, archives, and handoffs. Version history with restore and merge — built for long-running work, not chat logs.
Knowledge
Semantic enrichment, relation linking, and graph traversal. Memory becomes navigable knowledge — not a flat pile of notes.
Retrieval
Hybrid search across SQL, vectors, lexical index, and graph. Separate browse from inject. Optional precision modes (hybrid, semantic, fulltext, title) when you need more control.
Reasoning support
Progressive retrieval, token budgets, and summary-first context assembly — typically ~85% fewer tokens than dumping full memory bodies into prompts.
Learning
Quality signals, consolidation, and compression — optional pipelines that improve the brain over time without retraining your model.
External agent support
Capability manifests, workspace scoping, and 28 Ratary MCP tools. External agents discover what the brain can do; Ratary never embeds agent reasoning — see What Ratary is not.
Platform
Pluggable adapters: choose SQL metadata (Postgres, Supabase, MariaDB/MySQL, D1, TiDB/Cockroach) plus optional pgvector, R2/S3/MinIO, Azure Blob, GCS, Meilisearch, OpenSearch, Neo4j, Redis, DuckDB, ClickHouse. Same application code for every backend.
Self-host, deploy to Vercel, or run a control plane with metering and federation. RBAC workspaces, audit trails, SSO, and policy hooks — opt-in when you need them.
Observability
OpenTelemetry, Prometheus metrics, SLO dashboards, and cost visibility for production brains.
Ingest from external systems of record — Notion (live on hosted prod), Confluence, Google Drive, SharePoint, and Teams connectors (code complete · enable per connector via env). Webhook HMAC, incremental sync, provenance on memories. Flags: KNOWLEDGE_FABRIC_ENABLED + CONNECTOR_SYNC_ENABLED. Guides: Knowledge fabric · Production enable · Phases 32–34 in docs-ai.
Use cases
Who is Ratary for?
What you build
What Ratary provides
Developer AI
Coding assistants across IDEs and sessions
Persistent project memory, MCP tools, handoffs
Enterprise search
Internal knowledge discovery
Hybrid retrieval over structured memory, not just files
Customer support
AI that handles tickets
Durable customer context without re-prompting every thread
Ratary is building that layer — open, portable, self-hostable, and protocol-native. Not another chat wrapper. Not another vector dump. Infrastructure for persistent intelligence.
Knowledge should accumulate. Boundaries should be respected. Agents should stay coherent across time.
If you're building AI that lasts longer than a single prompt — build on Ratary.
Contributing
How do I contribute?
Ratary Server (this repo): fork ontorata/ratary → branch → npm run lint && npm run build && npm test → PR to ontorata/ratary.
Standard PR gate:
npm run lint && npm run build && npm test
Org-memory / recall changes (maintainers with .ai/ workspace): run the full gate before merge — see docs/RATARY-VALIDATION-RUNBOOK.md:
Extended governance (.ai/ phases, ADRs) lives in the development mirror — optional for contributors; docs-only and standard PRs to ontorata/ratary are welcome without the mirror.
Ontorata MCP and Ontorata Studio accept contributions in their own repositories — not via this repo.