Typed memory
Semantic vaults hold knowledge — what the agent knows. Skill vaults hold procedures — how the agent behaves. The distinction is structural, not a metadata label.
Store knowledge and skills in typed vaults
you compose, control and query — entirely local.
pip install ctxvaultThe building block of CtxVault.
Memory slots can be public or restricted, shared across agents or private to one. Attach agents to vaults, control who can read and write, and compose the topology that fits your use case — from a single vault to a multi-agent system with layered access boundaries.
Cognitive architectures such as ACT-R and CoALA separate long-term memory into declarative knowledge and procedural skills. CtxVault makes this distinction structural: semantic vaults store what the agent knows, skill vaults store how it should act. Both participate in the same topology.
Semantic vaults hold knowledge — what the agent knows. Skill vaults hold procedures — how the agent behaves. The distinction is structural, not a metadata label.
Every vault is an independent index. Restricted vaults are attached to specific agents. The boundary is part of the architecture, not a rule in a config file.
Context written in one session is retrievable days later. "Financial constraints" matches "cut cloud costs by 15%" written three days prior.
Every vault is a plain directory on your machine. Read it, edit it, query it through the CLI. Contribute documents alongside what agents write.
No cloud, no telemetry, no external services. Vaults live on disk. What you connect to that knowledge base is your choice.
Monitor vaults, inspect agent-written content, add documents, query knowledge bases directly.
Connect LangChain, LangGraph, or any pipeline via REST. Full CRUD, semantic search, agent write support.
Any MCP-compatible client gets direct vault access. The agent handles list, query, write, and read_skill on its own.
| CtxVault | ChromaDB + custom | LangChain Memory | Mem0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vault isolation | ✓ | you build it | ✗ | ✗ |
| Access control | ✓ | you build it | ✗ | ✗ |
| Typed memory | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Agent-written memory | ✓ | you build it | partial | partial |
| CLI observability | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Local-first | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | cloud |
| MCP server | ✓ | you build it | ✗ | ✗ |
# Initialize vaults
ctxvault init knowledge
ctxvault init skills --type skill
# Add documents, index, and query
ctxvault index knowledge
ctxvault query knowledge "what decisions were made last week?"
# Inspect skills
ctxvault skills skills
ctxvault skill skills "Weekly Engineering Update"
# See everything
ctxvault vaults
Single vault, single agent. Semantic RAG over PDF, MD, TXT, DOCX with source attribution.
02Multi-Agent IsolationTwo agents, two vaults. Isolation enforced at the infrastructure layer, not metadata filtering.
03Persistent Memory AgentRecalls context across sessions. "Financial constraints" retrieves cost targets from days prior.
04Composed TopologyThree agents, five vaults — private, shared, and public. Access boundaries mirror organizational ones.
05Skill Vault AgentOne agent, two vault types — semantic and skill — integrated via MCP. Knowledge for what, skills for how.