Kontexta: workspace + context engine for coding agentsREV 5.0.0

Your agents have memory. It just isn't yours.

Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, Copilot and every other agent keep their own silo. kontexta is one shared workspace on your machine: vault, journal, calendar, hands, and a profile the agent honors. Searchable, versioned, and portable across every tool.

  • Local-first
  • No cloud
  • Your machine, your data
  • Apache-2.0
$npx kontexta start
FIG. 0: LIVE LOOP

Claude Code fixes the bug and journals it. Hermes, a different tool with zero prior context, recalls it from the same local vault. Wire up your clients →

58
MCP Tools
10
Clients
100%
Local
4x
Token Savings
kontexta MCP server score
SEC. 01: FIELD DEMONSTRATION

Product in Action



FIG. 2: PRODUCT SPECIMENS · 06 PLATES
FIG. 2a
Interactive Dashboard: Local-first dashboard for managing memory, browsing context, and inspecting the Brain live.

Interactive Dashboard

Local-first dashboard for managing memory, browsing context, and inspecting the Brain live.

PLATE 01/06 · DASHBOARD
FIG. 2b
Hand Creation: Define governed capabilities via templated or custom project-specific commands.

Hand Creation

Define governed capabilities via templated or custom project-specific commands.

PLATE 02/06 · HANDS
FIG. 2c
Git Persistence & History: Two-way Git sync with granular version history and one-click restore.

Git Persistence & History

Two-way Git sync with granular version history and one-click restore.

PLATE 03/06 · SYNC
FIG. 2d
Agent Journal: Distilled per-topic summaries auto-generated from every MCP tool call.

Agent Journal

Distilled per-topic summaries auto-generated from every MCP tool call.

PLATE 04/06 · JOURNAL
FIG. 2e
Docs Publisher: Turn your knowledge base into a shareable, published documentation site.

Docs Publisher

Turn your knowledge base into a shareable, published documentation site.

PLATE 05/06 · PUBLISH
FIG. 2f
Secure Login: Sign in with one-time login codes, no passwords to leak, no shared secrets.

Secure Login

Sign in with one-time login codes, no passwords to leak, no shared secrets.

PLATE 06/06 · LOGIN

FIG. 3: ADDITIONAL CAPABILITIES · 12 UNITS
F-01
Vault ManagementLocal-first knowledge
F-02
Agent JournalingDistilled summaries
F-03
MCP ConnectorUniversal API integration
F-04
SQLite FTS5Zero-hallucination search
F-05
Markdown StudioNative MD editing
F-06
Mermaid VisualsMMD diagram rendering
F-07
Zero-Trust PrivacyLocal-only security
F-08
Clipping EngineInstant web docs
F-09
HTML RenderingSandboxed report viewer
F-10
PDF & PNG ExportOne-call report export
F-11
Event ManagerConflict-aware scheduling
F-12
Context PublishVault to shareable site
SEC. 02: MEASURED · cl100k_base

Unmatched Context Efficiency


Dumping entire codebases into your AI's context window is expensive and degrades response quality. Kontexta's MCP server retrieves only the precise files needed.

72.8%
Fewer tokens consumed per task
4.0×
Context budget freed for reasoning
Surgical
Reads specific files & markdown sections
SEC. 03: SYSTEM SCHEMATIC

Brain → Hands → Eyes


A closed feedback loop that turns observation into durable knowledge.

FIG. 4a · 01

Brain

The context engine.

Git-backed markdown vault with FTS5 search, surgical section edits, and token-aware reads.

FIG. 4b · 02

Hands

Governed execution.

Sandboxed, project-defined commands declared in kontexta.json with optional human approval.

FIG. 4c · 03

Eyes

Automatic feedback loop.

Every MCP tool call is captured to a per-project event log without agent involvement. Periodic distillation turns raw events into per-topic markdown summaries indexed alongside the vault.

STEP 01
BRAIN
the vault
STEP 02
HANDS
the sandbox
STEP 03
EYES
the journal
SEC. 03a: DEFENSIBILITY

Three things a memory MCP can't copy


Every other tool in this space is a memory plugin bolted to Claude. These three are why kontexta isn't.

OPERATING PRINCIPLE

kontexta turns AI agents from isolated chat sessions into a continuous operational system.

SEC. 04: INSTALLATION

Install


Choose your setup. npx, Docker and Contributors ship the dashboard and the MCP server together; MCP only runs headless from your agent's config.

OPT-01
npx
Recommended

One command. Dashboard + MCP together. Requires Node 22 LTS.

View procedure →✓ Dashboard + MCP
OPT-02
Docker
Alternative

Persistent vault on a host volume.

View procedure →✓ Dashboard + MCP
OPT-03
MCP only
Headless

Headless MCP server from npm. No dashboard, no ports. Requires Node 22 LTS.

View procedure →MCP only
OPT-04
Contributors
Advanced

Clone, bootstrap, hack. Apache-2.0.

View procedure →✓ Dashboard + MCP
REFERENCE SHEETS: T · P · C · S

Go deeper


Four detail sheets: the full tool inventory, the publish pipeline, an honest comparison, and per-client setup.

SEC. 05: NOTES & TOLERANCES

Questions & security


The honest answers to the things you should be asking before you point an agent at your codebase.

N-01Where does my data live?
On your machine. By default, data lands at ~/.local/share/kontexta (Linux), ~/Library/Application Support/kontexta (macOS), or %APPDATA%\kontexta (Windows), no configuration needed. You can override this with KONTEXTA_DATA_DIR. Everything is indexed in a local SQLite database. Nothing is sent to a third-party service: no embeddings API, no telemetry, no cloud sync. Your only outbound traffic is the optional git push to a remote you configure yourself.
N-02How is this different from a vector DB or RAG pipeline?
Kontexta uses SQLite FTS5 for deterministic keyword and regex retrieval. No embeddings, no semantic-similarity guesswork. The same query returns the same results, every time. You also get exact substring/regex search (catches URLs, identifiers, hyphenated terms that tokenisers miss).
N-03How is Hands execution sandboxed?
Hands tools are declared per-project in kontexta.json, so agents cannot invent commands. Each invocation runs with no shell interpreter, a locked working directory, and a scrubbed environment (only PATH, HOME, USER, LANG, TZ are forwarded). Output is capped via a ring buffer; timeouts kill the entire process group. Argv parameters are validated by re2 patterns (ReDoS-proof) with an 8 KB UTF-8 cap, and the default pattern blocks leading-dash argv injection.
N-04Does the agent need to remember to log its work?
No. The MCP server wraps every tool registration at boot, so every call writes a per-event line to the project's append-only event log automatically: fsynced per write, redacted for sensitive args, with git branch/commit context attached. Agents can enrich the log with journal.write (kind: 'note' for decisions, kind: 'intent' for topic pivots), but the durable capture happens with zero agent involvement. Periodic distillation (manual via journal.distill, or scheduled via the WebUI) turns the raw event log into per-topic markdown summaries indexed in the same FTS5 surface as the rest of the vault.
N-05Can I require human approval before destructive commands run?
Yes. Mark a Hands tool as confirm-required and it returns a single-use, CSPRNG-bound token that expires in 60 seconds. The agent must call hands.confirm with that token to actually execute. The token is the auth, and it cannot be replayed.
N-06What stops a malicious URL from hitting my internal network?
The URL clipper performs DNS resolution and rejects every resolved address against a blocklist: loopback, private IPv4/IPv6, link-local, CGNAT, multicast, IPv4-mapped IPv6, and special hostnames (localhost, *.local, *.internal, *.lan). Cloud-metadata endpoints like 169.254.169.254 are blocked. Redirects are followed manually with per-hop re-validation (max 5 hops), so a public URL that 302s into the metadata service is still refused. Response bodies are streamed with a 10 MiB ceiling.
N-07How are file-system operations protected?
Every path is checked with assertPathInside before read or write; files cannot escape their project root or KB base. files.move validates both source and destination containment. Symlinks are skipped (lstatSync) so a loop under your vault cannot recurse forever. Writes are atomic (tmp file + rename) so a crash mid-write cannot corrupt a file. Download responses strip CR/LF from filenames and use RFC 5987 encoding to block HTTP response splitting.
N-08What about secrets in error messages or git output?
Git error output is run through redactCredentials() before logging or returning to clients; user:pass@ patterns in URLs are stripped. Hands output is similarly capped and bounded so a runaway process cannot leak via log volume.
N-09Does it work offline?
Fully. The MCP server, the web UI, and the SQLite index are all local. Git push for backup is optional and the only operation that touches the network.
N-10Which agents work with kontexta?
Anything that speaks MCP: Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Codex, Continue, Antigravity, Claude Desktop, Aider, Cline, and OpenClaw. The admin.onboard_agent tool auto-detects and writes the right context file (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, .cursor/rules/*, .continue/rules/*, .aider/kontexta.md, .cline/kontexta.md, .openclaw/kontexta.md) so agents pick up the workflow automatically.
N-11What's the license?
Apache-2.0. Use it commercially, fork it, embed it. No telemetry callback, no rug pull.
N-12How do I configure kontexta for OpenClaw?
Add the Kontexta MCP server to your OpenClaw configuration. For a local Kontexta instance, configure OpenClaw to connect via stdio with command `openclaw` and args `["mcp", "serve", ...]`. For a remote Gateway, use `openclaw mcp serve --url wss://gateway-host:18789 --token-file ~/.openclaw/gateway.token`. OpenClaw also supports file-based context via `.openclaw/kontexta.md`.
APPENDIX A: DISTRIBUTION

Get it where you live


PEERLIST LAUNCHED
APPENDIX B: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank You Supporters!


We launched Kontexta on Peerlist and received incredible support from the community. A massive thank you to everyone who backed our launchpad debut!

PLATE B: PEERLIST LAUNCHKontexta Peerlist Supporters
APPENDIX C: MORE LAUNCHES

Other Launches


Kontexta is live across the builder community — check out our other launchpads and platforms.

Fazier badgekontexta - Save your tokens. Remember Forever | Product HuntKontexta on Smithery
kontexta (kon-TEX-tah) · by safiyu · REV 5.0.0 · Apache-2.0