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sovseal turns Claude Desktop into a personalized assistant that remembers your preferences, project constraints, and past decisions — without ever sending that data to a third-party service. Setup requires a single JSON block in claude_desktop_config.json. No email signup or API key is needed for the free local-only tier. On first launch, sovseal automatically creates ~/.sovseal/config.json containing a local project token and a secure AES-256 encryption key, both of which stay exclusively on your device.

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Installation

1

Open your Claude Desktop configuration file

Locate the config file for your operating system:
  • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
  • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
  • Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Create the file if it does not already exist.
2

Add the sovseal-memory server block

Paste the following JSON into claude_desktop_config.json. If the file already has an mcpServers key, add the sovseal-memory entry inside the existing object.
claude_desktop_config.json
3

Restart Claude Desktop

Fully quit and relaunch the application. The store_memory and recall_memory tools will appear in your Claude Chat UI once the server connects successfully.
Cold start on first run: The MCP server downloads the quantized Xenova/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 embedding model (~22 MB) the very first time it launches. Claude Desktop may show a loading spinner for 5–30 seconds depending on your connection speed. All subsequent startups load the model from the local cache at ~/.sovseal/models/ in under 25 ms.

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Verify the installation

Test the full store-and-recall cycle to confirm the memory layer is working.
1

Store a fact

In a new chat session, tell Claude something you want it to remember:
“Keep in mind that I prefer working on TypeScript projects using ESLint.”
Claude should call store_memory with the following payload and return { "success": true, "id": "<uuid>" }:
2

Recall the fact in a fresh session

Start a brand-new chat session to clear the active context window, then ask:
“What is my preferred programming stack?”
Claude will call recall_memory with { "query": "preferred programming stack" } and return a personalized answer based on what you stored.

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Local storage details

All stored memories are written to an on-device serverless vector database at ~/.sovseal/db/memories.lance (a LanceDB vector store). Because LanceDB operates serverlessly, no local database daemon or connection management is required.

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Configure cloud replication (optional)

By default, memories live only on your local disk. If you want encrypted multi-device sync, you can enable server-blind replication from the sovseal Dashboard.
1

Generate credentials

Create a project token and write-behind API key from the sovseal Dashboard.
2

Add credentials to your sovseal config

Set the values in ~/.sovseal/config.json:
~/.sovseal/config.json
Replication runs in the background. The server only ever stores AES-256-GCM ciphertext — your plaintext data never leaves your device.

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Troubleshooting

MCP server fails to connect
  • Node.js version: Ensure Node.js >= 20.0.0 is installed and accessible on your system PATH. Run node -v in a terminal to verify.
  • Check the log file for connection errors:
    • macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp.log
    • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\Logs\mcp.log
  • If you see npx: command not found, specify the absolute path to your npx binary in the command field.