cognee

cognee is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from otto-haus/otto. It costs 21 tokens per session (367 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A local recall system that searches relationships and context across indexed project files, such as receipts, past decisions, and tickets. It uses a graph, which is a way to connect related pieces of information.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to recall cross-file context and prepare cited information before updating curated project knowledge. Adding data requires a recorded receipt, while deletion requires explicit approval.
Why use it?
It helps an agent find relevant links between separate files before making a decision or suggesting an update. Reading is separated from actions that add or delete indexed data.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Not installable on its own: it runs a file from its repository that does not travel with it. Clone the repository, or install whatever ships that file. The line is ./scripts/cognee-home.sh start.

Install

Getting it into your agent

There is no command for this one: it runs only inside a plugin, and the catalogue could not identify which plugin ships it. The source is linked below.

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 cognee

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/otto-haus/otto/cognee.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/otto-haus/otto/cognee)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/otto-haus/otto/cognee"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/otto-haus/otto/cognee.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 367 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00021 $0.00367
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00183
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00073
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00037

Measured 6d ago against content hash 1076ac39fdc0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cognee 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 6d 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.

skill/cognee/SKILL.md · 51 lines

What it actually says

Cognee skill (local recall)

Triggers

  • cognee, graph recall, relationship context, cross-artifact recall, MCP cognee-local

When to use

  • Relationship recall across indexed Otto files (receipts, precedents, tickets)
  • Cited context packs before proposing Curation updates

When not to use

  • Canon edits (Standards, Practices, charters) — files + Curation only
  • Letta memory writes — Letta owns runtime memory
  • Autonomy policy changes — Otto-owned YAML

Local setup

pip install cognee
# venv recommended: ~/.otto/cognee/venv (binary is cognee-cli on 1.1.x)
export OTTO_COGNEE_ENABLED=1
./scripts/cognee-home.sh start
./scripts/cognee-home.sh health

MCP template: config/cognee-mcp.template.json (HTTP :8001 preferred on cognee 1.1.x; register only when health is ready).

Autonomy

  • cognee.recall: green (read-only search/recall)
  • cognee.capture: yellow (index ingest — receipt required)
  • cognee.delete: red (explicit approval)

Run autonomy.evaluateAction before capture or any mutating MCP tool.

Smoke

export OTTO_COGNEE_ENABLED=1
task smoke:cognee-recall

Writes receipts/cognee/recall/*.json when Cognee health is ready and a capture receipt exists. Never uses conversation=default.

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. 6d ago First seen · 51 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A 1076ac39fdc0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cognee is a skill published in the GitHub repository otto-haus/otto (7 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 367 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories