claude-mem vs LangMem

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.

LangMem

Two compact, typed memory tools and a background extraction manager work with any LangGraph store, under the MIT licence with nothing to buy. The newest PyPI release, 0.0.30, dates from 27 October 2025. The repository has no changelog, tags or test workflow, and 23 of 54 open issues have no reply.

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.

LangMem

1. Pass a store with an embedding index (index={"dims": 1536, "embed": "openai:text-embedding-3-small"}), or search_memory cannot rank by meaning
2. Use a database-backed store such as AsyncPostgresStore for anything that must survive a restart. InMemoryStore loses everything
3. Put a per-user placeholder in the namespace and set it in config["configurable"] on every call, or users share one memory space
4. Send the memory id with update and delete, and never with create. A retried create writes a duplicate under a new UUID
5. Run on Python 3.11 or later. src/langmem/knowledge/extraction.py uses typing.NotRequired, which Python 3.10 lacks