Lore

Lore is a self-hosted project memory system for humans and agents.

It exposes:

• a browser UI
• a project-scoped HTTP API
• a native MCP endpoint
• a Rust CLI

Lore stores project data as ordered typed blocks on disk rather than in a traditional database. It also records project history, supports reversible versioning, and can export project state plus history into Git.

Install

CLI installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brontoguana/lore/main/scripts/install-cli.sh | sh

Server installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/brontoguana/lore/main/scripts/install-server.sh | sh

The install scripts are designed to download versioned GitHub release artifacts, verify published checksums, and place the binaries in a predictable local install path.

Docker is not the primary install path today. Lore currently prioritizes direct binary installation and simple self-hosting.

Run

After installing the server binary, run the full setup:

lore-server install

This will:

1. Create an admin account (interactive prompt)
2. Ask for your domain name
3. Download and configure Caddy as an HTTPS reverse proxy
4. Start both services as systemd daemons (requires sudo)
5. Install a tightly scoped sudoers rule so future lore-server update runs can restart Lore and Caddy without prompting

Then open https://yourdomain.com/setup — that setup flow explains when to use HTTP vs MCP and gives agent-oriented instructions.

Other commands:

lore-server status       # check if everything is running
lore-server update       # update to the latest release
lore-server uninstall    # remove services (keeps data)
lore-server clean        # remove services + binaries (keeps data)

Updates

The CLI includes an optional self-update flow backed by GitHub releases:

lore self-update status
lore self-update check
lore self-update apply
lore self-update enable

The server also supports optional startup self-update from the admin UI. When enabled, lore-server checks the configured GitHub repo before it starts listening, installs a newer release in place if one exists, and relaunches itself once with the same arguments.

CLI usage

Set defaults once:

lore config set --url http://127.0.0.1:7043 --token YOUR_AGENT_TOKEN --project alpha.docs

Examples:

lore projects
lore self-update check
lore blocks list
lore grep "deployment"
lore blocks read BLOCK_ID
lore add "New note"
lore update BLOCK_ID "Updated content"
lore librarian answer "Summarise the current project status"
lore history list
lore history show VERSION_ID

Current capabilities

• Human login with local auth, OIDC, and optional trusted-header auth
• Roles, users, sessions, and scoped agent tokens
• Generated setup pages at /setup and /setup.txt
• Project-scoped answer librarian and project librarian
• Optional approval for project librarian actions
• Audit trails for auth, librarian activity, and project actions
• Reversible project version history with diff-style views
• Admin-configured Git export
• Optional GitHub-release-backed self-update for the CLI and server
• Per-user UI theme selection with server default fallback

Build locally

cargo test -q

Binaries:

cargo run --bin lore-server
cargo run --bin lore -- --help