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COGX (the Cognee eXchange format) is the common shape that memory data takes when it moves into or out of Cognee. It is the single format that every importer translates into and every exporter writes out of — so adding a new memory tool, backing up a dataset, or moving data between Cognee instances all use the same machinery. You rarely touch COGX directly. It’s the layer underneath cognee.remember() (for import) and cognee.export() (for export). This page explains what it is so the migration tools make sense.

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Why a common format

Every memory tool stores data differently: Mem0 has short memory strings, Letta has agent memory blocks and message history, Zep and Graphiti have entity graphs with time-stamped facts. Without a shared format, importing from N tools and exporting to M tools would need N × M one-off converters. COGX collapses that into N + M. Each tool only has to translate to or from COGX once:
  • On import, a source adapter reads one tool’s export and emits COGX records. A single loader ingests those records — identical no matter where they came from.
  • On export, Cognee dumps a dataset’s graph into a COGX archive that you can store, restore, or hand to another system.

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What’s in COGX

COGX represents memory as a stream of typed records. Each record describes one kind of thing a memory system can hold: Typed records also carry a scope (user_id, agent_id, session_id, run_id) and timestamps, so ownership and time information survive the move. Raw nodes preserve their original graph properties verbatim.

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Archive layout

An exported COGX archive is just a directory you can inspect:
manifest.json records the COGX version the archive was written with. A reader refuses to load an archive written by a newer major version than it understands, so an out-of-date Cognee won’t silently misread a future archive.

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Import modes

When records enter Cognee, a mode controls how much processing they get. This is the main knob you’ll actually set: Each source picks a sensible default (Mem0, LangMem, and Letta default to re-derive, Zep/Graphiti to hybrid, COGX archives to preserve), and you can override it.
A Cognee-origin cogx archive writes each document chunk twice — as a Document record and as a Raw node carrying the chunk’s original properties. A preserve restore rehydrates the raw node, so facts that reference the chunk keep their graph topology instead of dangling, and the chunk’s content survives the round-trip. As a result, CHUNK and hybrid search work against the dataset after a Cognee → Cognee import.

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Where to go next

Migrate Memory Systems

Import from Mem0, Letta, Zep, or Graphiti — with runnable examples

remember()

The operation that ingests COGX records into the graph