# CortexDB

> CortexDB is an open-source, pure-Go library that keeps an AI agent's memory and knowledge in one SQLite file: vectors, FTS5 full-text search, RAG knowledge, scoped agent memory, and an RDF 1.2 knowledge graph with SPARQL, RDFS and OWL 2 RL inference, SHACL validation and read-only Cypher. It works without an embedding model, exposes 80+ tools over MCP, ships as a Claude Code and Codex plugin, and serves the same brain over gRPC with Rust, Python and Node.js clients. MIT licensed. Latest version: v2.117.0 (2026-10-02).

Key facts:
- Module: github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/v2 (Go 1.25+, no CGO — modernc.org/sqlite)
- Storage: one SQLite file by default; a postgres:// DSN runs the same brain on PostgreSQL + pgvector
- Models are optional: CortexDB never imports an LLM SDK. Without an embedder, retrieval is lexical (FTS5 with CJK bigrams, so whole-sentence Chinese and Japanese questions work) and the entity graph is still built
- Retrieval modes: lexical, vector, hybrid, graph, ppr (Personalized PageRank, HippoRAG 2 style) and auto; lanes fuse by rank
- Measured recall@5 through the public API, no embedder, lexical → auto (cortexdb-bench): 2WikiMultiHopQA 0.657 → 0.807, MuSiQue 0.457 → 0.542, LoCoMo 0.493 → 0.495, LongMemEval 0.861 → 0.862; p95 under 30 ms
- Knowledge graph: RDF 1.2 triple terms, SPARQL 1.1 subset + SPARQL 1.2 (in-scope W3C suites pass on SQLite and PostgreSQL), read-only Cypher/GQL (0 wrong answers across 3,897 openCypher TCK scenarios), RDFS + OWL 2 RL subset kept current automatically, SHACL + SHACL-AF triple rules, contradictions reported with the conflicting triples
- Change feed: every committed write in commit order, exactly once, nothing from a rolled-back transaction (changes_since, db.Changes)
- Vectors: HNSW, IVF, flat, scalar/product quantization, binary 1-bit codes with exact rescoring (recall@10 0.979–0.996 at 1/32 memory)
- Ontology: Palantir-style typed objects, links, interfaces, object sets, governed action types with audit trail
- Live 3D view (serve_graph_3d): find, ask, read-only Cypher and node-by-node expansion across the whole store; read-only, phone-friendly, every view a link (?focus=, ?ask=, ?cypher=)
- Not a distributed vector database and not an enterprise RDF server: embedded, inspectable, local-first

## Docs

- [Website](https://liliang-cn.github.io/cortexdb/): overview, quick start, benchmarks, FAQ ([中文](https://liliang-cn.github.io/cortexdb/zh/))
- [Full documentation as one text file](https://liliang-cn.github.io/cortexdb/llms-full.txt): README and the complete guide
- [README](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/blob/main/README.md): features and API
- [Guide](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/blob/main/docs/GUIDE.md): layers, retrieval, knowledge graph, ontology, shared-brain operations ([中文指南](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/blob/main/docs/GUIDE_CN.md))
- [Go API reference](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/v2)
- [Changelog](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md)

## Install

- Go library: `go get github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/v2`
- Claude Code plugin: `/plugin marketplace add liliang-cn/cortexdb` then `/plugin install cortexdb@cortexdb`
- Codex plugin: `codex plugin marketplace add liliang-cn/cortexdb && codex plugin add cortexdb@cortexdb`
- gRPC server: `go install github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/v2/cmd/cortexdb-grpc@latest`, or a release binary
- Clients: `cargo add cortexdb-client` · `pip install cortexdb-client` · `npm install cortexdb-client`

## Examples

- [Runnable examples](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/tree/main/examples): core vectors, RAG, memoryflow, knowledge graph and SPARQL, graphflow, MCP tools, importflow, ontology
- [Benchmark harness](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/tree/main/cmd/cortexdb-bench): LongMemEval, LoCoMo, MuSiQue and 2WikiMultiHopQA through the public API

## Optional

- [Rust client](https://crates.io/crates/cortexdb-client)
- [Python client](https://pypi.org/project/cortexdb-client/)
- [Node.js client](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cortexdb-client)
- [Releases](https://github.com/liliang-cn/cortexdb/releases)