Self-hosted notes companion
Chat with an AI companion that remembers your notes folder and past chats, running locally
- Repository
- topoteretes/cognee
- Stars
- 33,002
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
- Files
- 1 file
What it does
Once installed, the agent can load a folder of your own notes (a journal, an Obsidian vault, or any .md or .txt files) into cognee's local memory, then answer your questions about them. Every chat is saved to that memory, so later conversations can build on earlier ones. Without your own folder, it runs on bundled sample notes so you can see how it works first.
Great for
- Developers who want to try cognee's memory on personal notes
- People with an Obsidian vault or journal who want to query it conversationally
- Anyone exploring a self-hosted alternative to cloud note assistants
Skip it if
- Sensitive private notes you do not want sent to an LLM provider: answers and ingestion use an LLM API key, so note content is processed by that external service (the files do not say otherwise).
- Quick one-off lookups where a simple search would do, since every run consumes LLM credits.
- Users who need a finished app: this is a cookbook wrapper around scripts whose setup is described in a separate README not included here.
Try asking
- “Set up my journal folder at ~/Notes and tell me what I wrote about my job last month”
- “Ask my Obsidian vault what I decided about the budget project”
- “Start a chat with my companion and remember that I prefer short answers”
- “Check whether the companion setup is ready before I ingest my notes”
Install in 3 steps
- 1
Download the skill
The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the Apache-2.0 licence and an attribution note.
self-hosted-companion.zip - 2
Add it to your agent
Claude Code (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip self-hosted-companion.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip self-hosted-companion.zip -d .claude/skills/Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.
- 3
Ask for the task
No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.
Get better results
- Run the --check step first to confirm the API key and setup before ingesting your notes.
- Leave out the folder path to test with sample notes before using your own files.
- Use --clear only when you want to erase the dataset, including all earlier chats; the cleanup command also forgets it.
What's inside
- SKILL.md
Redistributed unmodified from topoteretes/cognee under the Apache-2.0 licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.