claude-mem vs Hy Memory

claude-mem

Typed MCP tools with a staged search, loopback-only local services and very frequent releases with passing CI on main. Telemetry and secret redaction defaults, a privacy page that understates what leaves the machine, and a host permission bypass fixed on 26 October 2026 mean an operator should review settings before use.

Hy Memory

An Apache-2.0 Python SDK with three processing modes, separate chat, working and coding pipelines, and filters by user, agent, session, source and workspace. Deletion does not stick everywhere. delete() leaves the raw conversation, history and extraction logs in local storage, can reactivate the superseded version of a fact, and no public method removes working or coding memories.

claude-mem

1. Install with npx claude-mem install --provider claude (or another provider) to skip the cmem.ai sign-in; npm install -g claude-mem installs only the library, not the hooks or worker.
2. Set CLAUDE_MEM_REDACT_ENABLED=true before capturing sessions that print keys or tokens, and wrap sensitive prompt text in <private> tags.
3. Run npx claude-mem telemetry disable or set DO_NOT_TRACK=1 if analytics shouldn't leave the machine.
4. Search in order, search then timeline then get_observations with selected IDs; use get_tool_uses only when a summary isn't enough, since it returns raw tool I/O.
5. Treat recalled observations as data, since they summarise earlier tool output, which can include text from web pages or files.

Hy Memory

1. Pass user_id on every add() and user_ids on every search(). Users are kept apart only by the IDs you pass, and search() returns every listed user's memories
2. Choose the mode before writing. lite makes no LLM calls and stores raw text. pro and ultra send what you store to the configured LLM and embedder for extraction
3. Don't rely on delete() to erase a fact. The raw conversation, history.db and cache.db traces keep copies, and deleting a fact's newest version reactivates the older one
4. Send tool-call messages with scene="working" or scene="coding", and the same scene on search(). Without tool messages a write falls back to chat memory
5. Keep python -m hy_memory.server on 127.0.0.1. It has no authentication and allows any web origin