alfredoizdev/contextforge-mcp

> Give Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot **persistent memory across sessions** via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Stop re-explaining your project every time.
ContextForge MCP is an open-source MCP server that connects your AI coding assistants to **long-term, searchable memory**. Decisions, architecture notes, debugging context, and project knowledge stay available across every session — across every tool that supports MCP.
- 🧠 **Persistent memory** — your AI remembers everything across sessions, days, and weeks
- 🔍 **Semantic search** — find knowledge by meaning, not keywords
- 🔗 **One memory, every tool** — Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Claude Desktop, Windsurf
- 🐙 **Git integration** — sync commits and PRs automatically
- ✅ **Task tracking** — issues, assignments, and project status
- 👥 **Team collaboration** — share projects and memory with your team
- 🆓 **Free tier** — get started without a credit card
> [!NOTE]
> **Works automatically, no config needed (v0.5.1+).** On connect, the server sends startup instructions to your AI client. Clients that honor them (Claude Desktop, Claude Code) **load your project memory at the start of every session and save new decisions proactively — without you editing any settings**. Running init (Step 4) is now a reinforcement, not a requirement, and still helps on clients that don't yet honor server instructions (e.g. Cursor).
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Quick Start
1. Install
No install step needed — the setup below runs the server via npx -y contextforge-mcp, which fetches it on demand and keeps it up to date.
> Prefer a global install for slightly faster cold starts? npm install -g contextforge-mcp is optional; if you do it, you can drop the npx -y prefix from the commands below.
2. Get your API key
1. Go to **contextforge.dev**
2. Sign up (free tier available)
3. Settings → API Keys → **Generate API Key**
4. Copy your key (starts with cf_)
3. Connect to your AI tool
Claude Desktop
Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:
Restart Claude Desktop.
Claude Code (CLI)
Restart Claude Code and run /mcp to verify it's connected.
Cursor
Add to your Cursor MCP settings:
GitHub Copilot (VS Code)
Add to your Copilot MCP config:
4. Initialize your project (recommended)
> With v0.5.1+ the server auto-loads memory on supporting clients (see the note at the top), so this step is **optional but recommended**: it reinforces the behavior, covers clients that don't honor server instructions, and fully overrides the built-in file-based memory.
Set up your project so your AI editor always prefers ContextForge memory:
By default, init auto-detects which editor your project uses and writes three rule sections and two hooks:
- **Memory rules** — route memory questions to ContextForge instead of the built-in file memory
- **Session Presence rules** — make parallel sessions check for each other at conversation start and before big changes
- **Startup Context rules** — load a short project summary (overview, open tasks, live sessions) from ContextForge at the start of every conversation
- **Post-compaction recall hook** (Claude Code only) — a SessionStart hook with matcher compact in .claude/settings.json. When Claude Code compacts a long conversation, the hook runs npx -y contextforge-mcp recall and re-injects the session objective, memories relevant to what you are working on, your project's 10 most recent memories and pending tasks, so decisions saved in ContextForge survive the summary.
- **Session objective hook** (Claude Code only, 0.13.0) — a UserPromptSubmit hook that runs the generated script .claude/hooks/contextforge-objective.cjs with plain node (~50 ms). It records your prompts to ~/.contextforge-mcp/sessions/ .jsonl on your machine, so recall can put the session's objective back after a compaction. The log is pruned after 14 days and never uploaded; see the privacy note below for what recall sends.
Files written:
- CLAUDE.md for Claude Code (signals: existing CLAUDE.md or .claude/ directory)