tinyhumansai/tinycortex

What is it?

Key features

• 01Admission gate filters low-value content at ingest time.
• 02Markdown files are the canonical store; other indexes can be rebuilt.
• 03Keyword, vector, graph and summary-tree retrieval primitives.
• 04Exponential freshness decay with a 7-day default half-life.
• 05Optional git-backed change tracking via the git-diff feature.
• 06Each item records source provenance and a security taint.

Use cases

• Adding long-term memory to a custom AI agent written in Rust.
• Building a local-first knowledge store that can be inspected as plain Markdown.
• Experimenting with ranking policies that combine recency and semantic relevance.

Quick start

1. 1

   Add the crate and async dependencies to your Rust project

   cargo add tinycortex anyhow
2. 2

   Add tokio with the runtime features used in the example

   cargo add tokio --features macros,rt-multi-thread
3. 3

   Store and recall a memory using the in-memory backend in your code

Things to know

• !It is a Rust library only, with no standalone application.
• !The hosted TinyCortex platform is in closed alpha and not part of this repository.
• !Licensed under GPL-3.0, a copyleft license that affects distribution of derived works.
• !Benchmark results cited in the README come from a harness not included in the repository.

In collections

Topics

FAQ

What is tinycortex?

A Rust library for local-first AI agent memory that filters low-value content at ingest and offers configurable retrieval over Markdown-backed storage. TinyCortex is an open-source Rust library that gives AI agents and applications a memory layer. Rather than storing everything and retrieving whatever is similar, it runs a multi-signal admission gate at ingest to drop low-value content, aiming to keep retrieved context focused.

Is tinycortex free to use? What license does it have?

tinycortex is open source under the GPL-3.0 license. Check the license terms before using it in commercial products.

Is tinycortex still maintained?

Actively maintained. The last commit to tinycortex was on Nov 2, 2026.

What can I use tinycortex for?

Adding long-term memory to a custom AI agent written in Rust. Building a local-first knowledge store that can be inspected as plain Markdown. Experimenting with ranking policies that combine recency and semantic relevance.

How do I install tinycortex?

Add the crate and async dependencies to your Rust project: cargo add tinycortex anyhow Add tokio with the runtime features used in the example: cargo add tokio --features macros,rt-multi-thread Store and recall a memory using the in-memory backend in your code

Where can I get tinycortex?

The source code and installation instructions are on GitHub: https://github.com/tinyhumansai/tinycortex