Claude Code with Cognee Cloud

Add persistent memory to Claude Code backed by your Cognee Cloud tenant with the Cognee memory plugin — no code and no pip install. The plugin hooks into Claude Code’s lifecycle: it captures your prompts, tool traces, and answers into session memory, injects relevant context on every prompt, and syncs the session into your knowledge graph on session end. Sessions are disposable; your memory isn’t.

1. Install the plugin

Install from the Claude Code marketplace before launching Claude Code, so the first claude launch is a clean session that runs the plugin bootstrap automatically:

claude plugin marketplace add topoteretes/cognee-integrations
claude plugin install cognee-memory@cognee

These CLI subcommands use the same plugin manager as the in-chat /plugin commands. If you instead install from inside the chat with /plugin, restart Claude Code (start a new session) before memory connects — /reload-plugins loads the skills but does not run SessionStart.

Install scope defaults to user (global). Pass --scope project or --scope local to confine the plugin to a single repo.

On the first clean launch you’ll see a “Cognee Memory Connected” message, and the status line shows cognee: <dataset> · <mode>.

2. Point it at Cognee Cloud

Write both variables once into ~/.cognee/.env, using your tenant base URL and an API key. The file is created with a commented template on the first session start, is shared with the Codex plugin, and its values act like shell exports — except you only set them once, and they survive closing the terminal:

macOS / Linux (bash, zsh)
Windows (PowerShell)
Windows (cmd.exe)

mkdir -p ~/.cognee
cat >> ~/.cognee/.env <<'EOF'
COGNEE_BASE_URL="https://your-tenant.aws.cognee.ai"
COGNEE_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"
EOF
chmod 600 ~/.cognee/.env

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\.cognee" | Out-Null
@'
COGNEE_BASE_URL="https://your-tenant.aws.cognee.ai"
COGNEE_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"
'@ | Add-Content "$env:USERPROFILE\.cognee\.env"

if not exist "%USERPROFILE%\.cognee" mkdir "%USERPROFILE%\.cognee"
(echo COGNEE_BASE_URL=https://your-tenant.aws.cognee.ai)>>"%USERPROFILE%\.cognee\.env"
(echo COGNEE_API_KEY=your-api-key)>>"%USERPROFILE%\.cognee\.env"

Re-running the block is safe — when a key appears more than once the last value wins, so pasting again updates the credentials instead of stacking duplicates. Changes apply on the next claude launch.

When COGNEE_BASE_URL is set, the plugin runs as a pure thin HTTP client to your tenant — it does not install a local Cognee runtime. When COGNEE_BASE_URL is unset, the plugin instead bootstraps a local API at http://localhost:8011. Setting the Cloud URL and key is what routes memory to your tenant.

Keeping a local-mode LLM_API_KEY in the same file is fine: cloud still wins, because a configured URL is what selects cloud. To send one terminal to local instead, export COGNEE_BACKEND=local before launching — unset COGNEE_BASE_URL does not work, because the env file re-injects the URL at the next launch. See Which mode wins.

3. Choose a dataset

All writes and recall are scoped to a single dataset, selected with the COGNEE_PLUGIN_DATASET environment variable. By default both the Claude Code and Codex plugins use agent_sessions, so memory is shared across both integrations automatically. Set a custom dataset at launch:

export COGNEE_PLUGIN_DATASET="my-project-memory"

Recall searches only the active dataset. COGNEE_PLUGIN_DATASET seeds it at launch and is read only then, so changing the variable mid-session does nothing. To move the running session to another dataset, use /cognee-memory:cognee-switch-datasets — it syncs the current session into its dataset first, then registers a fresh session on the chosen one, and its choice beats COGNEE_PLUGIN_DATASET for the rest of the launch.

Data added to the same dataset outside Claude Code (via the SDK or the server) is visible in Claude Code through the plugin.

4. Pick a session (optional)

By default the session_id is derived from the Claude Code session, so a new conversation starts a new one and claude --resume continues the same one. Set COGNEE_SESSION_ID to pin a specific named session, or to deliberately share one live session across two terminals:

export COGNEE_SESSION_ID="my-project"

5. Verify

Restart Claude Code so SessionStart runs with the new credentials, then open a fresh session and ask:

What do you know from cognee?

Answering from a clean session confirms it’s recalling from your Cloud memory. You can also invoke the skills explicitly:

Skill	Purpose
`/cognee-memory:cognee-remember`	Store something in memory now
`/cognee-memory:cognee-search`	Query your memory
`/cognee-memory:cognee-sync`	Persist the current session into the graph
`/cognee-memory:cognee-forget`	Delete memory you ask to forget, along with its derived graph knowledge. Irreversible
`/cognee-memory:cognee-code`	Index a repository into the code graph and query it. Against a tenant this is explicit only — see below
`/cognee-memory:cognee-switch-datasets`	Move the running session to another dataset

Two things about the code graph differ against a Cloud tenant. Repositories are not indexed automatically — the plugin only auto-indexes against a local server, so a private checkout is never shipped to a hosted tenant on its own initiative. Ask for it with /cognee-memory:cognee-code and give it a git URL: your tenant clones the repo rather than reading your disk, which is also why the graph reflects your last pushed commit rather than your working tree. A local path is not an option here — the server cannot see it. See Code graph.

Memory is captured and synced from your sessions over time, and writes build the graph in the background — so a brand-new setup may recall nothing until at least one session has synced. An empty first recall is expected.

Share specific datasets with connected agents from the Connections page to grant scoped read access.

Configuration reference

Precedence: environment variables → ~/.cognee/.env → defaults. There is no config.json; older versions wrote one, and SessionStart now deletes a leftover file. The COGNEE_BACKEND / COGNEE_CLAUDE_BACKEND mode switch follows the same precedence. Wherever it is set, it pins that terminal’s mode regardless of where the connection variables are defined.

Env var	Default	Notes
`COGNEE_BASE_URL`	unset	Your tenant URL; enables Cloud/managed-endpoint mode
`COGNEE_API_KEY`	unset	Cloud API key from the API Keys page; auto-minted only in local mode
`COGNEE_BACKEND`	unset	`local` or `cloud` — pins this terminal’s mode; `COGNEE_CLAUDE_BACKEND` does the same for this plugin only and beats it
`COGNEE_ENV_FILE`	`~/.cognee/.env`	Read the one-time setup file from somewhere else
`COGNEE_PLUGIN_DATASET`	`agent_sessions`	Dataset for writes and recall at launch; `/cognee-memory:cognee-switch-datasets` changes it mid-session
`COGNEE_SESSION_ID`	derived from the Claude Code session	Override to pin a named session, or share one across terminals
`COGNEE_SESSION_PREFIX`	`claude`	Prefix on auto-derived session IDs (`<prefix>_<claude-session-id>`)
`COGNEE_SESSION_STRATEGY`	`per-directory`	Currently inert — the plugin derives session IDs from the Claude Code session and never reads this
`COGNEE_PREFER_MEMORY`	`true`	Inject the `SessionStart` steer treating Cognee as authoritative memory
`COGNEE_STATUSLINE`	`true`	Auto-configure the `cognee: <dataset> · <mode>` status line

See the full integration guide for the session-distillation and idle-watcher variables; the advanced session-sync and update-notification knobs are covered in the plugin README.

Full integration guide

Hooks reference, session sync, and debugging

Codex

The same memory plugin for the Codex CLI

Getting Started

Local UI

Navigating the UI

Cloud Functionality

Agent Integrations

Connections

Reference

1. Install the plugin

2. Point it at Cognee Cloud

3. Choose a dataset

4. Pick a session (optional)

5. Verify

Configuration reference

Full integration guide

Codex

​1. Install the plugin

​2. Point it at Cognee Cloud

​3. Choose a dataset

​4. Pick a session (optional)

​5. Verify

​Configuration reference

Full integration guide

Codex

1. Install the plugin

2. Point it at Cognee Cloud

3. Choose a dataset

4. Pick a session (optional)

5. Verify

Configuration reference