Is cognee still maintained?

Yes, active. Last change today. Latest release v1.6.7, 5 days ago.

Widely used. 33k stars, 3 years old, by an organization. As with any download, get it from the official repo.

Reading the repo

Opening the box…

How to set up cognee (topoteretes/cognee) · gitmanual

Assembly instructions

topoteretes/cognee

Cognee is the open-source AI memory platform for agents. Give your AI agents persistent long-term memory with small models for free

Python#agent-memory#agent-skills#ai#ai-agents

Before you start

Is it free?: YesOpen source (Apache-2.0).
Still maintained?: Yes, activeLast change today. Latest release v1.6.7, 5 days ago.
Can I trust it?: Widely used33k stars, 3 years old, by an organization. As with any download, get it from the official repo.

Difficulty: Involved
Time: 30 min or more
Stars: ★ 33,245
Activity: Updated this month

Saved setup from 1 h ago

Will it work on macOS?

Yes, it installs on your macOS

The README gives a pip install for macOS.

Your system

macOS Windows Linux

Start here

Website ↗cognee.aiThe project's own site.

Also: In the browser ↗

Heads-upBuilding it yourself? It also needs PostgreSQL, Redis and 41 settings in .env (6 secret).

Install with a package manager

pip

pip install cognee

From the README, exactly as the maintainers wrote it.

Run it with Docker

A self-hosted app: Docker runs it on your computer and you open it in the browser. Needs Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine on Linux). Run docker compose commands inside the cloned repo folder.

Docker

docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000  -e LLM_API_KEY="sk-..."  -e ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL=false  -v cognee_storage:/cognee-storage  cognee/cognee:main

From the README, exactly as the maintainers wrote it.

Did you get it running?

No reports for macOS yet.

Still stuck? Get a written guide

GitManual AI Agent reads the 18 key files and writes a step-by-step guide for macOS. Once written, it's saved for everyone.

Parts list

1×Python >=3.10,<3.15runtime
1×uv package manager
1×PostgreSQL service
1×Redis service

41× settings in .env

LLM_API_KEYsecret
LLM_MODEL
LLM_PROVIDER
NEXT_PUBLIC_IS_CLOUD_ENVIRONMENT
LLM_ENDPOINToptional
LLM_API_VERSIONoptional
EMBEDDING_API_KEYsecret
EMBEDDING_MODEL
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER
EMBEDDING_ENDPOINToptional
EMBEDDING_API_VERSIONoptional
GRAPHISTRY_USERNAME
GRAPHISTRY_PASSWORDsecret
STRUCTURED_OUTPUT_FRAMEWORK
DB_PROVIDER
DB_NAME
GRAPH_DATABASE_PROVIDER
GRAPH_DATASET_DATABASE_HANDLER
VECTOR_DB_PROVIDER
VECTOR_DATASET_DATABASE_HANDLER
TRANSLATION_PROVIDER
TARGET_LANGUAGE
CONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD
MIGRATION_DB_PATH
MIGRATION_DB_NAME
MIGRATION_DB_PROVIDER
JWT_LIFETIME_SECONDS
HASH_API_KEYsecret
ALLOW_HTTP_REQUESTS
ALLOW_CYPHER_QUERY
RAISE_INCREMENTAL_LOADING_ERRORS
REQUIRE_AUTHENTICATION
ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL
COGNEE_CLOUD_API_URL
COGNEE_CLOUD_AUTH_TOKENsecret
UI_APP_URL
ENV
TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISMsecret
LITELLM_LOG
WEB_SCRAPER_TIMEOUT
WEB_SCRAPER_MAX_DELAY

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Good to know

Dockerfile available (base image: ghcr.io/ladybugdb/extension-repo@sha256:180c83fb190e9d6ef8d324850b192db26794ab7cb866a38813a45365f14bd46d).
Dev Container config found — you can open it in VS Code Dev Containers or GitHub Codespaces for a zero-setup environment.
Tool versions pinned in mise.toml — mise install (or asdf install) installs them all.
Has AGENTS.md — instructions for coding agents. You can open Claude Code (or another agent) in the cloned folder and ask it to do the setup for you.
Nested projects: cognee-connectors/connectors/apollo/pyproject.toml, cognee-connectors/connectors/asana/pyproject.toml, cognee-connectors/connectors/github/pyproject.toml, cognee-connectors/connectors/gmail/pyproject.toml and 11 more

Details

License: Apache-2.0
Open issues: 1,116
Branch: main

Files we read (18)

.devcontainer/devcontainer.json

.env.example

.env.template

.github/workflows/adapter_caching_tests.yml

.github/workflows/backend_docker_build_test.yml

.github/workflows/basic_tests.yml

.github/workflows/cli_tests.yml

.github/workflows/e2e_tests.yml

.github/workflows/examples_tests.yml

CONTRIBUTING.md

Dockerfile

README.md

cognee-connectors/.env.template

cognee-frontend/.env.template

cognee-starter-kit/.env.template

docker-compose.yml

mise.toml

pyproject.toml

5,176 files in the repo