Operations and security

Backups, encryption at rest, tamper evidence, consolidation, health checks, and troubleshooting.

A memory store is a database. Treat it like one: back it up, watch its health, and know how to prove what is in it.

Backup and restore

memos backup --output ./backup-2026-11-05.db
memos restore ./backup-2026-11-05.db

Backups are SQLite files. Stop writes for a consistent snapshot, or use the backup command, which handles the WAL correctly.

Encryption at rest

memos encrypt --key "$MEMOS_KEY"
memos decrypt --key "$MEMOS_KEY"

Encryption requires better-sqlite3-multiple-ciphers. Keep the key outside the repository. Losing the key means losing the store.

Health and consolidation

memos health
memos consolidate --dry-run
memos consolidate --watch --interval-min 60
memos dream --json

• health reports contradictions, TTL issues, confidence, and recall outcomes.
• consolidate merges duplicates, archives stale memories, supersedes decayed ones (kept as history), and distils cluster summaries.
• dream is consolidation with a report and optional scheduling.

Nothing is hard-deleted by consolidation. Superseded memories remain in the version timeline.

Retention

memos store "Temporary note" --ttl 3600
memos health

TTL is per memory. Expired memories stop surfacing in recall; they are not silently destroyed. Use forget when you need a deletion certificate.

Embeddings

The default is Model2Vec's potion-base-8M: 256 dimensions, pure JavaScript, no native addon. For higher accuracy, configure a provider:

After changing providers, re-embed:

memos reindex-embeddings
memos reindex-embeddings --purge-stale

--purge-stale removes vectors written by other models. Without it, old and new vectors coexist and scores become meaningless.

Multi-harness stores

memos harness list
memos harness merge --from ~/.other-harness/memos.db --dry-run
memos harness merge --from ~/.other-harness/memos.db

Merging keeps provenance, so you can tell which harness produced a memory.

Upgrades

1. Back up.
2. Install the new version.
3. Run memos doctor.
4. Run memos health.
5. Re-run memos eval if you keep a retrieval corpus.

Schema migrations are handled by the store. If a migration fails, restore the backup rather than editing the database by hand.

Security model

• Local by default. The core paths make no network calls.
• No telemetry. No analytics, no phone-home.
• Write gate. Suspicious writes can be quarantined for review instead of entering recall.
• Provenance. Every memory can carry a source and derivation chain.
• Redaction. Sensitive fields can be redacted before storage.
• Tamper evidence. memos audit emits a chain that detects edits.
• Deletion certificates. memos forget records proof of deletion.

Observability

Incident checklist

1. Stop writes.
2. Copy the database file.
3. Run memos doctor and memos health.
4. Check memos audit --expect-tip if tamper evidence matters.
5. Restore the last known-good backup if the store is corrupt.
6. Re-run memos eval after recovery.

Troubleshooting

Related

• Memory model
• CLI and API reference
• Benchmarks