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Claude Code Integration

This guide shows the fastest path to plug the cognee MCP server into Claude Code.

If you are new to Claude Code itself, first take a look at the Getting Started and MCP chapters of their docs:

1. Start the cognee MCP server following the steps on the MCP deployment guideline.

Here is a quick summary:

# Clone the Repository
git clone https://github.com/topoteretes/cognee.git
 
# Install uv if you don't have it
pip install uv  
 
# Navigate to cognee-mcp directory
cd cognee-mcp
 
# Install project dependencies
uv sync --dev --all-extras --reinstall
 
# Activate Virtual Environment
source .venv/bin/activate
 
# Run the Server
python src/server.py

2. Install Claude Code (if not done yet)

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

3. Navigate to your project directory

cd /path/to/your/project

4. Run the Claude Code CLI

claude

5. Tell Claude Code to add the server

Here is an example:

claude mcp add cognee \
  -s project \
  -e ENV=local \
  -e TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISM=false \
  -e LLM_API_KEY="YOUR_OPENAI_KEY" \
  -e EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=fastembed \
  -e EMBEDDING_MODEL=sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2 \
  -e EMBEDDING_DIMENSIONS=384 \
  -e EMBEDDING_MAX_TOKENS=256 \
  -- uv --directory /{"cognee_root_path"}/cognee-mcp run cognee

If you’d like to use the above settings, remember to replace “YOUR_OPENAI_KEY” and “cognee_root_path” with the correct values.

  • What it does:
    • mcp add cognee – registers a new server named cognee.
    • -s project – stores in .mcp.json, so each developer approves it once per project. Omit for user‑level scope.
    • -e flags – env‑vars required by cognee.
    • The final uv … cognee command is how Claude Code spawns the server.

6. Restart Claude Code and approve the server

claude
  • The first session in this repo will prompt something like:
Approve project MCP servers?
• cognee    /{"cognee_root_path"}/cognee-mcp
  • Select Enable (or press Enter).

From now on Claude Code can call cognee’s tools automatically when relevant!

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