By claude-mem gained 949 GitHub stars in 24 hours on December 13, 2025, solving Claude Code’s biggest frustration—losing project context between sessions. This Claude Code plugin automatically captures everything Claude does during your coding sessions, compresses it with AI using Claude’s Agent SDK, and injects relevant context back into future sessions. No more manual CLAUDE.md maintenance. Furthermore, you eliminate re-explaining your project structure every morning. Install with two commands, restart Claude Code, and your context survives forever. Moreover, the plugin saves roughly 2,250 tokens per session while trending number nine on GitHub today, signaling genuine developer interest in fixing context management once and for all.
The Problem Every Claude Code User Hits
Claude Code forgets your project the moment your session ends. Reconnections wipe context. Consequently, you manually maintain CLAUDE.md files, re-explain architectural decisions repeatedly, and waste tokens on redundant context every single session. Workflow continuity breaks between sessions. Additionally, the more complex your project, the more painful the context tax becomes. This isn’t a minor annoyance. Rather, it’s friction that compounds daily.
What claude-mem Actually Does
claude-mem runs invisibly in the background, capturing tool outputs and invocations through five lifecycle hooks: SessionStart, UserPromptSubmit, PostToolUse, Stop, and SessionEnd. When you execute a tool, claude-mem captures the output—typically 1,000 to 10,000 tokens—and compresses it into a roughly 500-token semantic observation using Claude’s Agent SDK. These observations get categorized by type: decision, bugfix, feature, refactor, discovery, change. Each observation is tagged with relevant concepts and file references, then stored in a local SQLite database with full-text search capabilities.
When you start a new session, claude-mem automatically injects context from your last ten sessions. The plugin calls this “layered memory retrieval with token cost visibility”—progressively disclosing context to balance coverage with efficiency. Specifically, you save approximately 2,250 tokens per session compared to manually maintaining CLAUDE.md files. That’s not marketing spin. Instead, that’s measured token savings from real workflows.
Installation Takes Three Commands
Installation couldn’t be simpler:
/plugin marketplace add thedotmack/claude-mem
/plugin install claude-memRestart Claude Code. That’s it. Context automatically appears in subsequent sessions with zero additional configuration. Notably, the plugin auto-installs its dependencies: Bun runtime, uv Python package manager, and bundles SQLite 3. You need Node.js 18.0.0 or higher and the latest Claude Code with plugin support. Everything else handles itself.
Configuration is optional. If you want to tweak settings, they live in ~/.claude-mem/settings.json. The key setting is CLAUDE_MEM_CONTEXT_OBSERVATIONS, which defaults to 50 observations injected at session start. Nevertheless, most users never touch configuration. The defaults work.
Real Workflows Where This Actually Helps
Multi-day project continuity is the killer use case. You work on a feature Monday, close your session, and reopen the project Tuesday. Immediately, claude-mem auto-injects Monday’s context—architectural decisions, file structure changes, and recent edits. Claude remembers. Therefore, you don’t re-explain. That’s the workflow improvement that matters.
Querying past decisions through the mem-search skill turns your session history into searchable knowledge. Ask “What did we decide about error handling?” and the plugin returns relevant observations with claude-mem:// URI citations. Consequently, there’s no manual searching through docs or commit history. Natural language queries against your entire project timeline.
Privacy-sensitive code gets protection through <private> tags. Wrap sensitive content like <private>API_KEY=secret</private> and claude-mem excludes it from storage. This is critical for API keys, credentials, and proprietary logic. The plugin respects boundaries.
The web viewer UI runs at http://localhost:37777, providing real-time memory stream visualization with emoji indicators for observation importance. It’s not essential for basic usage, but helpful for understanding what claude-mem captures.
The Beta Feature: Endless Mode
Standard Claude Code hits roughly 50 tool uses before context exhaustion. Endless Mode compresses tool outputs into roughly 500-token observations while preserving full transcripts on disk, promising a 20-times increase to roughly 1,000 tool uses with linear O(N) scaling instead of quadratic complexity. However, the trade-off: 60 to 90 seconds of latency per tool execution during observation generation.
Endless Mode is experimental. Production readiness varies by use case. If you’re doing rapid iteration requiring instant tool responses, the latency kills momentum. Conversely, if you’re working on complex long-running projects where 1,000 tool uses beats 50, the trade-off makes sense. Enable it through the web viewer settings panel without manual git operations, test it on non-critical work, and decide if the latency trade-off fits your workflow.
The AGPL License Problem
claude-mem uses AGPL-3.0 licensing, and that’s going to block enterprise adoption. AGPL requires that if you modify the plugin and provide it over a network—think SaaS offerings—you must share your source code. Many corporations, including Google, prohibit AGPL code outright due to its viral nature: software that links to AGPL-licensed code may require AGPL licensing itself. This is why MongoDB, RethinkDB, and similar projects use AGPL for dual commercial licensing strategies.
For personal use on your local machine, AGPL doesn’t restrict you. Use claude-mem freely. But if your company has AGPL restrictions, you’re blocked from adoption regardless of how useful the plugin is. That’s a meaningful limitation for a significant portion of the developer market.
When to Use Built-in Features Instead
claude-mem isn’t the right choice for every scenario. Single-session work doesn’t benefit from persistent memory. Similarly, simple projects with minimal context don’t justify the plugin overhead. Corporate environments restricting AGPL licensing can’t adopt it. If you need stable, officially supported tools without beta software risks, stick with built-in features.
Built-in /compact summarizes sessions and reduces token usage through compression, but it’s session-scoped without persistent storage. Context editing auto-clears stale tool calls approaching token limits reactively, but doesn’t provide cross-session memory. Manual CLAUDE.md maintenance gives you maximum control and enterprise compliance but requires constant manual updates. These alternatives work. They’re just not automatic.
claude-mem fits long-term projects spanning weeks or months, workflows involving multiple coding sessions per day, and complex projects requiring context continuity. If you tolerate beta software and AGPL licensing, the productivity gains justify the trade-offs.
The Bigger Picture
claude-mem reflects the Claude Code plugin ecosystem boom in 2025. Multiple marketplaces now offer 243-plus plugins, with 175 supporting Agent Skills v1.2.0. Community-curated collections provide specialized sub-agents for DevOps automation, documentation generation, project management, and testing suites. The Claude Agent SDK—renamed from “Claude Code SDK” to reflect broader capabilities—gives developers access to the same core tools, context management systems, and permissions frameworks powering Claude Code itself.
The trend moves from manual tools to AI-powered automation. We started with manual CLAUDE.md files in 2024, added built-in context management commands like /compact and /clear, and now see third-party plugins like claude-mem and grov providing automatic, persistent, AI-powered context management in 2025. The future points toward fully autonomous context management with zero configuration, where session boundaries become invisible and AI assistants function as teammates with genuine memory.
What This Means
claude-mem works today. It’s brand new—expect bugs, breaking changes, and rough edges—but the core functionality delivers on the promise. Install it, test it on a real project, and measure whether the token savings and context continuity improve your workflow. The AGPL license blocks some users. Endless Mode’s latency makes it unsuitable for rapid iteration. However, for developers working on long-term projects with Claude Code who can tolerate beta software, claude-mem eliminates context management friction that compounds daily.
The 949 stars gained in 24 hours isn’t hype. It’s developers recognizing that context persistence is a solved problem for their workflow, and claude-mem is how you solve it in December 2025.
