Show HN: Recall – Persistent Memory for Claude Code via MCP Hooks

1 point

4 months ago

Hi HN,

A while back I posted about recall MCP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45516584 Since then I updated a series of times and received quite a good amount of positive response. I decided to take it a step further and make it an actual product. It has been a super interesting journey.

I built Recall because I was spending 10+ minutes every Claude Code session re-explaining my project. Architecture, conventions, past decisions — all gone after a session restart or context compaction.

Recall is an MCP server that gives Claude Code persistent memory. It works by running four lifecycle hooks:

- session-start: fetches relevant memories and injects them as context - observe: captures key events (git commits, file changes, decisions) silently after Write/Edit/Task operations - pre-compact: saves critical state before Claude's context window gets summarised (this is the most valuable hook — compaction kills nuance) - session-end: records a session summary

Install as a native Claude Code plugin:

  /plugin install recall@claude-plugins-official
  /recall:setup   ← connects your API key

The plugin bundles the MCP server config, all 4 hooks, and auto-updates itself in the background. Alternatively, hooks-only install is still available for those who prefer it:

  curl -fsSL https://recallmcp.com/install-hooks | bash

Hooks are pure bash + curl. No daemon, no npm packages, no background processes. Every hook exits 0 on errors so it never blocks Claude.

Memory is stored in Redis with semantic search via embeddings (Voyage AI, Cohere, OpenAI, or others). Each tenant gets isolated storage with AES-256-GCM encryption.

Some features that might be interesting to this audience:

1. Native Claude Code plugin — ships as a proper plugin installable with `/plugin install recall@claude-plugins-official`. Bundles MCP server config + all 4 hooks. Auto-updates in the background.

2. Webhook ingestion — route GitHub/Stripe/any webhook into a Claude session. Your AI becomes event-aware.

3. Self-hosted — `curl -fsSL https://install.recallmcp.com | bash` gives you a Docker Compose stack with Redis + Recall. $12/mo license, air-gapped compatible.

4. Team sharing — one Claude learns, all team Claudes know. Workspace-scoped with selective sharing.

Open source (MIT): https://github.com/joseairosa/recall Hosted: https://recallmcp.com (free tier: 500 memories)

Technical details: TypeScript, Express 5, Redis/Valkey adapters, Drizzle ORM for billing/teams on PostgreSQL, StreamableHTTP MCP transport. 16 consolidated MCP tools exposed.

Happy to discuss the architecture, MCP protocol integration, or the memory/embedding strategy.