- name
- cognee-server
- description
- Use when the user wants to run the cognee API server (and optional UI) on their own machine — starting it, checking it's healthy, connecting the SDK or other clients to it, and choosing the right auth posture.
Start the cognee server locally
From an installed cognee (no Docker)
cognee-cli -ui
launches the full local stack: FastAPI backend on http://localhost:8000
and the UI on http://localhost:3000. Needs LLM_API_KEY in the
environment or .env. The interactive API reference is at
http://localhost:8000/docs, health at /health.
For API-only serving via Docker instead, use the cognee-docker skill (the
prebuilt cognee/cognee:main image or docker compose up from the repo).
Auth posture
ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL decides everything:
true(default): multi-tenant — auth required on every API call, per user+dataset database isolation.false: single-user local mode — no auth, shared local databases. Right choice for a personal dev server; never for anything exposed.
REQUIRE_AUTHENTICATION=false is ignored while access control is on; to turn
auth off you must set ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL=false.
Behind a TLS-terminating proxy set AUTH_TOKEN_COOKIE_SECURE=true so the auth cookie
gets the Secure attribute; leave it off for plain http://localhost, where a browser
refuses to store a Secure cookie.
Connecting clients to the running server
-
SDK / CLI against the server (instead of embedded local mode):
cognee-cli serve --url http://localhost:8000 # local instance cognee-cli serve --url https://... --api-key ck_... # cognee cloud instance cognee-cli serve # reconnect to the saved keyed instance cognee-cli serve --logout # disconnectIn Python:
await cognee.serve(url="http://localhost:8000"). -
HTTP: main routes live under
/api/v1/— the memory API isremember(plusremember/entry),recall,improve,forget;sessionscovers session memory;datasets,users,visualizehandle the rest. The legacyadd,cognify,search, anddeleteroutes still exist and are what the memory routes call underneath (seecognee/api/client.pyfor the registered routers, orGET /openapi.jsonon a running server).Note there is no
/api/v1/feedbackroute —feedbackexists as a CLI command and in the SDK, but is not exposed over HTTP.
Graph visualization without the full UI
from cognee.api.v1.visualize import visualization_server
shutdown = visualization_server(port=8080) # synchronous; returns a shutdown callable
Troubleshooting
- Port 8000 already taken → stop the other service or remap (compose:
"8080:8000"). - 401/403 on every call → you're in multi-tenant mode; either authenticate or
set
ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL=falseand restart. recall/searchreturns[]instead of erroring → permission-filtered result; check dataset access rights for the calling user.