MemPalace

A searchable memory palace for AI — mine projects and conversations, then search them semantically. Verbatim storage, local-first, zero external API by default.

Prerequisites

Ensure mempalace is installed:

mempalace --version

If not installed (uv recommended):

uv tool install mempalace   # or: pip install mempalace

Dynamic, version-correct instructions

MemPalace exposes operation-specific instructions through the CLI so this skill stays accurate as MemPalace evolves. To get instructions for any operation:

mempalace instructions <command>

Always prefer the CLI output over what is written here when the two disagree — the CLI is the single source of truth for the installed version.

Common operations

These are the six operations users ask for most often. Each one wraps a single MemPalace CLI subcommand. The mempalace instructions <name> form returns the full, version-correct guidance.

help — discover what MemPalace can do

mempalace instructions help

Use when the user is new, unsure what's possible, or asks "what can you do".

init — first-run setup of the palace

mempalace instructions init

Use when the user has just installed MemPalace, no palace exists yet, or the user explicitly asks to set up / configure / re-initialize their palace.

mine — ingest a project or conversation directory

mempalace instructions mine

Use when the user wants to fold a project's files into their palace, or to ingest exported conversation transcripts into the palace as searchable memory.

search — find verbatim memories by semantic query

mempalace instructions search

Use when the user wants to recall something from the past, find a previous decision, or rediscover code/notes/conversations they already wrote.

status — what's in the palace right now

mempalace instructions status

Use when the user asks "what's in my palace", "how big is my palace", or wants a summary of wings, rooms, and drawer counts.

audit — how well organized the palace is, plus a repair session

mempalace instructions audit

Use when the user asks how well organized or "messy" the palace is, why a scoped search or wake-up misses things, or wants to clean up wings, rooms, tunnels, hallways, or the knowledge graph. Read-only until the user decides each repair.

MCP tools (preferred over CLI)

Inside Antigravity, the MemPalace MCP server registers a rich set of tools. Use these instead of shelling out to the CLI for live operations (search, diary writes, drawer adds, knowledge graph queries, palace status). The MCP tools always reflect the current palace state without spawning a subprocess.

The MCP server is auto-registered when this plugin is installed at ~/.gemini/config/plugins/mempalace/. If the server does not appear in Antigravity's MCP store, run mempalace-mcp --version to verify the binary is on PATH, then restart Antigravity.

Design principles (verbatim from the project)

• Verbatim always — never summarize, paraphrase, or lossy-compress user data.
• Local-first, zero external API by default — extraction, embedding, and LLM-assisted refinement happen on the user's machine.
• Privacy by architecture — the system never calls out to external services for core operations.
• Performance budgets — hooks under 500ms; startup injection under 100ms.
• Background everything — filing, indexing, and timestamps happen via hooks in the background; zero tokens spent on bookkeeping in the chat window.

If a request would violate any of these principles, refuse and explain — even if it would be technically convenient.

Release awareness

Release checks are opt-in. Ask before enabling weekly checks with mempalace update configure --enable --installer uv-tool (or pipx / pip, matching the installation); the default is disabled. Enabling checks contacts PyPI but sends no palace content, identity, or telemetry. When mempalace_status reports an available release, distinguish updates.server from a local proxy's updates.client. Use the local update plan only for the client scope; a remote server update must be planned and authorized on the hub host by its operator. Never install an update without explicit user authorization.

Palace health: audit and repair session

When the user asks how well organized the palace is, whether memory is "messy", why a scoped search or wake-up misses things, or invokes /mempalace:audit, run the audit and then offer a repair session:

mempalace instructions audit

Follow the returned instructions. In short: run mempalace audit --json (read-only, safe while the MCP server is running), present the five layer scores and findings, then walk the user through repairs one structured question at a time with a recommended option first: merging wings and rooms spelled two ways, folding stub wings, deleting tunnels on generic tokens and self-link hallways, agreeing a knowledge-graph predicate vocabulary, and deciding how to handle generic-room concentration on the next mine. Moves over deletions, numbers before actions, verbatim content always. Re-run the audit at the end and write a diary entry with the before and after scores and every decision made.