zipmem-mcp: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md

zipmem-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file for Claude Code from ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp. It costs 5,386 tokens per session, scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of instructions for the zipmem-mcp project, a local memory service for terminal-based AI agents. It saves compressed session history in a project file so a new session can recover context with fewer tokens.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when developing or modifying zipmem-mcp, especially its session compression, local JSON storage, command-line interface, or MCP server behavior.
Why use it?
Long conversations and terminal logs can exceed an agent's context limit, while manual summaries lose details. These instructions explain the project's design and limits so changes preserve its memory behavior.

Instructions file for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: the file is CLAUDE.md. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Claude Code.

This is ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp's own configuration. It tells Claude Code how to work on zipmem-mcp itself, so it is not a mod to install elsewhere. Copy it as a starting point and replace the rules that are about this project. Everything zipmem-mcp configures →

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp/main/CLAUDE.md
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for zipmem-mcp CLAUDE.md

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp/claude-md.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp/claude-md)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp/claude-md.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 5,386 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 5,386 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.05386 $0.05386
Opus 5 $0.02693 $0.02693
Sonnet 5 $0.01077 $0.01077
Haiku 4.5 $0.00539 $0.00539

Measured 7d ago against content hash 827e521f4f66, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

zipmem-mcp CLAUDE.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 7d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

CLAUDE.md · 245 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 245 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository. It is intentionally complete: reading it should be enough to fully understand the project's purpose, architecture, data contracts, runtime behavior, and known limits.


1. What this project is

zipmem-mcp is an open-source, local-first MCP (Model Context Protocol) server + CLI that gives terminal AI agents (Claude Code and similar) an endless, low-token long-term memory. It compresses session history via Anchored Compacting and persists it to a single JSON file under .zipmem/, so a new session can restore full project context at near-zero token cost.

It runs entirely on the local machine: no cloud, no API keys, no AI calls on the server side. The only runtime dependencies are @modelcontextprotocol/sdk and zod.

The problem it solves

  • Long agent sessions bloat the context window. Prompt caching reduces cost but not window occupancy.
  • A ~5-minute idle invalidates the cloud KV cache, forcing full-price re-reads of huge histories.
  • Manual "summarize the session" is lossy and tedious; dumping raw terminal logs just relocates the bloat.

Anchored Compacting (the core philosophy)

Instead of storing the session, store its meaning:

  • Blueprints — architecture, schemas, decisions, conventions, dependency choices → preserved verbatim.
  • Anchors — code blocks are never stored; they become coordinates [file_path -> line_range -> concept]. The agent re-reads the file on demand to expand one.
  • Lessons — multi-step bug hunts distilled into one-line summary + root-cause/fix, to prevent regressions.
  • Everything else (raw code, dead ends, verbose logs, pleasantries, read-only file dumps) is discarded.

The key architectural bet

Compaction intelligence lives in a prompt directive, not in server code. The agent (LLM) produces the structured payload; the server only validates, normalizes, deduplicates, merges, and persists. This keeps the server dependency-free, zero-latency, and key-free. The server can never compact on its own — it has no LLM.

Read the full file on GitHub · 245 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 7d ago First seen · 245 lines · 5,386 tokens per session scan A 827e521f4f66

Subscribe to this mod's changes

zipmem-mcp CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository ahmetakyurt/zipmem-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 5,386 tokens to every session, about $0.0269 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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