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Continuum

Shared memory + orchestration for your coding agents.

One MCP server. Tell any client to read the plot — it becomes the orchestrator.
Dispatches fresh agents in isolated worktrees, shares lessons across every Claude Code / Codex / Cline chat on the project.

Node pnpm NestJS Astro sqlite-vec MCP

Quick StartMemory & VectorsWorkflowMCP ToolsWire It InConfiguration

Two Claude Code chats sharing memory through Continuum — left reads the plot and dispatches, right runs the work and updates status


Your agents forget. Continuum remembers.

Point any MCP client at Continuum and tell it to read the plot. The client becomes an orchestrator — it researches the codebase, verifies the plan, persists a dispatch record, and hands you a ready-to-paste prompt for a fresh agent in an isolated git worktree. Every other Claude Code / Codex / Cline chat on the project sees what's reserved, shares what's been learned, and never re-explains the codebase. One local server: vector knowledge base, orchestration protocol, agent registry — shared across every MCP-speaking app on your machine.

flowchart TD
    CC["Claude Code"]
    CX["Codex"]
    CL["Cline"]
    YOU["YOU"]

    subgraph CONTINUUM["CONTINUUM ORCHESTRATOR"]
        direction LR
        PLOT["PLOT.md<br/>protocol"]
        KNOW["KNOWLEDGE<br/>(vectorized)"]
        AGENTS["AGENTS<br/>registry"]
        PANEL["WEB PANEL<br/>(humans)"]
    end

    DB[("SQLite + sqlite-vec<br/>one file, your disk")]

    CC -- MCP --> CONTINUUM
    CX -- MCP --> CONTINUUM
    CL -- MCP --> CONTINUUM
    YOU -- HTTP --> CONTINUUM
    CONTINUUM --> DB
Loading

No SaaS. No telemetry. No keys to manage. Boots in seconds. Survives reboots. Scales with you.


What you get

🧠 Vectorized memory Every lesson your agents learn becomes a 768-dim embedding indexed in sqlite-vec. Recall is semantic, fuzzy, and instant — no exact-match games.
🔍 RAG-native search knowledge_search({q: "how do we handle webhook retries?"}) returns ranked metadata (slug + kind + agentSlug + timestamps); follow up with knowledge_get({slug}) for the body. Metadata first keeps top-K context cheap; only fetch what's worth reading.
🗺️ Canonical workflow Every project gets a PLOT.md seeded with a 4-phase dispatch protocol — Intake → Research → Verify → Handoff. Stop re-explaining your process.
🤖 Multi-agent registry State machine + reserved-path tracking stops parallel agents from clobbering each other across git worktrees.
📚 Two-tier knowledge fundamental lessons are binding rules loaded on every dispatch. situational lessons surface via semantic search when relevant.
🖥️ Human web panel Astro + React UI to browse projects, agents, plot, and knowledge while AI clients drive everything via MCP.
🔌 Client-agnostic Standard MCP / Streamable HTTP. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cline, Cursor, or anything that speaks the protocol.
🔒 Local-first One SQLite file. WAL mode. No cloud. Optional embedder is your call (Ollama, TEI, anything OpenAI-shaped).
📦 One container in prod Single image, one HTTP port, one mounted volume. Drop on any host, point your MCP clients at it.

Why Continuum exists

Without Continuum With Continuum
Session ends → context gone. Lessons persist as embedded vectors. Recall survives reboots, models, and clients.
You re-explain conventions every session. knowledge_search ranks lessons by relevance; knowledge_get pulls the body when needed.
Two parallel agents edit the same file. reserved_paths + status state machine surfaces collisions before dispatch.
Each new task improvises orchestration. PLOT.md protocol seeded into every project — Intake → Research → Verify → Handoff.
"What did Claude do last week?" registry_list paginates dispatch metadata (slug, status, branch, reserved paths). agent_get({slug}) pulls the full record.
Knowledge scattered across chat logs. One SQLite database. One vector index. One source of truth.

Quick start

🐳 The easy path — one Docker command

docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up

That's it. The whole stack comes up with hot reload, a SQLite browser, and a single shared volume — no Node, no pnpm, no native-build dance on your host machine.

What you get:

Service URL What it is
api http://localhost:6685 NestJS + MCP server. Swagger at /docs. Hot-reloaded on file change.
web http://localhost:6680 Astro + React panel. Hot-reloaded.
sqlite-web http://localhost:6667 Browser UI for the live SQLite database — inspect projects, agents, knowledge, vectors. Loads sqlite-vec automatically.
embedder (optional) http://localhost:8080 Hugging Face TEI running an HTTP embedder. Off by default.

The API embeds in-process by default (Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-embed-m-v1.5 via Transformers.js, 768-dim, ONNX q8). No external service required for semantic search. Override via EMBEDDER_URL to point at any HTTP-based embedder (Ollama, TEI, OpenAI-compatible). Turn the bundled TEI container on with the embedder profile:

HF_TOKEN=hf_xxx docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml --profile embedder up

Bind mounts keep the source tree on your host — edits are instant. Named volumes hold node_modules so installs survive restarts. Database lives at ./.local-data/dev-orchestrator.db on your host, gitignored, safe to wipe.

Stop everything:

docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml down            # keep data
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml down -v         # nuke volumes too

🛠️ Or run on bare metal

pnpm install
pnpm dev
API + MCP http://localhost:7776 (Swagger at /docs)
Web panel http://localhost:7777

Dev SQLite at ./.local-data/orchestrator.db. Gitignored. Wipe to reset — next boot recreates and migrates forward.

Requires Node >=22.12.0 and pnpm 10.33+. The compose path skips both.


Memory & vectors

This is the headline. Continuum's knowledge layer is what makes your agents stop being amnesiac.

How a lesson becomes memory

agent finishes a dispatch
        │
        ▼
knowledge_create({
  project, agentSlug, slug,
  content: "When wiring rate-limit guards in Nest,
            register them in app.module.ts AFTER
            the auth guard, not before. Order matters.",
  kind: 'situational'
})
        │
        ▼
content → embedder (in-process by default, or Ollama / TEI / OpenAI-compatible)
        │       Snowflake Arctic Embed v1.5 → 768-dim vector
        ▼
SQLite row + sqlite-vec index entry
        │       freshness profile = (URL, model, dim)
        ▼
forever queryable by ANY future agent on this project

How recall works

Phase 1 of every dispatch (the orchestrator does this automatically):

knowledge_list({ project, kind: 'fundamental' })
  └─ returns metadata for every binding lesson — slug + agentSlug + timestamps.
knowledge_get({ project, slug })  // for each fundamental slug
  └─ full body — base branch, worktree convention, no-AI-attribution, etc.

knowledge_search({ project, q: "rate limit middleware nest interceptor order" })
  └─ vector similarity over your prose
  └─ returns top-K ranked metadata (no content)
  └─ does NOT need exact wording — natural language works
knowledge_get({ project, slug })  // for each relevant hit
  └─ pulls the full lesson body

Search and list return metadata only — slug + kind + agentSlug + timestamps. Call knowledge_get for the body of any lesson worth reading. Keeps top-K context cheap; the orchestrator triages first, fetches second.

The result: the agent that's about to plan your task already knows what your last five agents learned the hard way. No prompt engineering. No "here's our convention" copy-paste.

Two kinds of knowledge

Kind Loaded when Use for
fundamental Every dispatch, unconditionally Project-wide rules: base branch, worktree naming, commit conventions, append-only files
situational Only if semantically relevant to the task Specific gotchas: "auth guard ordering," "regen artifact merge strategy," "Stripe webhook idempotency keys"

The freshness profile

Vectors are pinned to a (EMBEDDER_URL, EMBEDDER_MODEL, EMBEDDER_DIM) triple. Change any one and Continuum marks stale vectors for rebuild on next boot. You stay in control of which embedder owns your memory — local Ollama, self-hosted TEI, or anything OpenAI-shaped.

Pluggable embedders

The embedder is required and runs in-process by default (Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-embed-m-v1.5, 768-dim, ONNX q8). The model weights are bundled in the API image — no extra container, no extra config, semantic search works out of the box.

Override via EMBEDDER_URL to delegate embedding to an HTTP service:

# Option A — Ollama (simplest, fully local)
ollama pull <embedding-model>
# EMBEDDER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/embed
# EMBEDDER_MODEL=<embedding-model>   EMBEDDER_DIM=768

# Option B — Hugging Face TEI (production-grade, batched)
HF_TOKEN=hf_xxx docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml --profile embedder up embedder
# EMBEDDER_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080/v1/embeddings
# EMBEDDER_MODEL=<repo-id>   EMBEDDER_DIM=768

# Option C — anything OpenAI-compatible /v1/embeddings
# Works out of the box. Match the dim.

Built on sqlite-vec

The vector index lives in the same SQLite file as your projects, agents, and plot. One file. One backup. One restore. No separate vector DB to provision, no Pinecone bill, no Chroma daemon to babysit. WAL mode keeps reads concurrent with writes; foreign keys keep your registry consistent; busy_timeout = 5000 keeps things calm under contention.


Wire it into your AI client

Claude Code

// ~/.claude.json  →  mcpServers
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "continuum": {
      "transport": "streamable-http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:7776/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code. Tools appear under mcp__continuum__*.

Codex

# ~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.continuum]
transport = "streamable-http"
url = "http://127.0.0.1:7776/mcp"

Anything else (Cline, Cursor, custom)

Point any MCP-compatible client at http://127.0.0.1:7776/mcp. Streamable HTTP, stateful sessions (UUID-keyed). Server name continuum.


Your first project

Inside any wired client:

Create a Continuum project for /absolute/path/to/my/repo,
then read the PLOT.md and act as orchestrator
for the following task: <describe what you want done>.

What happens:

  1. Client calls project_create({project: "/absolute/path/..."})
  2. Server seeds PLOT.md (the orchestration protocol) and an empty knowledge base
  3. Client calls plot({project}), reads the protocol, enters orchestrator mode
  4. Client follows the 4-phase workflow — researches, verifies, persists a dispatch record, hands you a ready-to-paste prompt for a fresh agent in a git worktree

You paste the prompt into a new Claude Code / Codex session. That agent codes inside an isolated worktree against its reserved paths. Other parallel agents see the new agent's reservations via the coordination brief.

When work merges, the orchestrator records what was learned via knowledge_create — and every future dispatch on this project benefits from it forever.


The workflow

1. Intake

registry_list({project, status:'active'})     // paginated metadata: slug + reservedPaths + timestamps
agent_get({project, slug})                    // bodies (request/plan/implPrompt/coordinationBrief) per active agent
knowledge_list({project, kind:'fundamental'}) // binding-rule metadata
knowledge_get({project, slug})                // body per fundamental slug — read every one
knowledge_search({project, q: "<task intent>"}) // RAG → ranked metadata
knowledge_get({project, slug})                // body for each relevant hit

2. Research

Spawn an Explore / Plan subagent. It reads the codebase against the loaded knowledge. Produces a file-by-file plan: create / modify / delete. Plan only — no code.

3. Verify

Spawn a critique agent. It challenges every file touched, looks for orphans and broken call sites, cross-checks against active agents' reserved paths. Returns annotated deltas.

4. Handoff

agent_create({
  project, slug, branch, worktree,
  reservedPaths,        // paths this agent owns
  request,              // verbatim human task
  plan,                 // final agreed plan
  implPrompt,           // self-contained prompt for the dispatched agent
  coordinationBrief,    // short block for every other active agent
})

Agent lands as draft. Promote with agent_update({status:'active'}) when you dispatch. On merge, record the SHA and bank the lesson:

agent_update({ project, slug, status:'merged', mergedCommit, postMergeNotes })
knowledge_create({ project, agentSlug, slug, content, kind:'situational' })

The orchestrator never edits source, runs regen, merges branches, or pushes commits. It researches, verifies, coordinates, and persists. Code lives in fresh agents inside isolated worktrees.


MCP tools

Every tool takes project (canonical absolute path) as its first argument.

Project

Tool Purpose
project_list Enumerate registered projects
project_get Fetch one project
project_create Register project, seed PLOT.md + knowledge
project_rename Rename a project
project_delete Cascade delete (project + agents + lessons)

Plot — the orchestration protocol

Tool Purpose
plot Read PLOT.md
plot_update Apply a unified git-format diff (zero fuzz, exact context match)

plot_update validates --- a/PLOT.md / +++ b/PLOT.md / @@ headers strictly. Context mismatch throws hunk_mismatch with the failing hunk header. Re-read with plot, regenerate the diff, retry. No silent overwrites.

Knowledge — the vector memory

Tool Purpose
knowledge_list Lesson metadata (slug, kind, agentSlug, timestamps). Optional kind filter. No content.
knowledge_search Semantic query → ranked metadata. q free-text intent, optional kind, optional limit. No content.
knowledge_get Read one lesson by slug — full body
knowledge_create Record a new lesson — kind: 'fundamental' | 'situational'. Embedded automatically.
knowledge_update Replace lesson content. Re-embeds on save.
knowledge_delete Retire a lesson

knowledge_search runs vector lookup over the sqlite-vec index. Pass natural prose — questions, task statements, descriptions all work. SQL wildcard syntax does not. Response is ranked metadata; call knowledge_get({project, slug}) for the body of any hit worth reading. Same pattern for knowledge_list (use kind: 'fundamental' to enumerate the binding set, then get each).

Agents

Tool Purpose
registry_list Paginated agent metadata — {data, page, limit, hasNextPage}. Each data row: slug, status, branch, worktree, reservedPaths, timestamps, mergedCommit, abandonedReason. Optional status filter; default limit 10, max 50. No artifact bodies.
agent_get Full record by slug — includes request, plan, implPrompt, coordinationBrief, postMergeNotes
agent_create Persist a draft dispatch record
agent_update Transition status, edit fields

Allowed transitions: draft → active → merged | abandoned. merged requires a 7–40 char commit SHA. abandoned requires a reason. Only active agents reserve paths.

registry_list returns the collision matrix metadata in one paginated envelope. To inspect a dispatch's plan or implPrompt, follow with agent_get({project, slug}). Page through with page until hasNextPage is false.


Example session

human: orchestrate adding rate-limit middleware to /api routes

claude: → registry_list({project, status:'active'})  // 0 active
        → knowledge_list({project, kind:'fundamental'})
                                              // metadata for binding rules
        → knowledge_get({project, slug:'base-branch'})       // → main
        → knowledge_get({project, slug:'worktree-convention'}) // → ../<slug>/
        → knowledge_search({project, q:'rate limit middleware nest interceptor'})
                                              // ✨ 2 ranked hits on guard ordering (metadata)
        → knowledge_get({project, slug:'rate-limit-guard-ordering'}) // bodies fetched
        → spawn Plan subagent → plan returned
        → spawn critique subagent → 1 issue: missed `app.module.ts` registration → fixed
        → agent_create({
            slug: 'rate-limit-middleware',
            branch: 'feature/rate-limit',
            worktree: '/abs/path/../rate-limit-middleware',
            reservedPaths: ['apps/api/src/common/rate-limit/**', 'apps/api/src/app.module.ts'],
            request: 'orchestrate adding rate-limit middleware to /api routes',
            plan: '...',
            implPrompt: '...',
            coordinationBrief: 'reserves common/rate-limit/**, edits app.module.ts (additive)'
          })
        → here's the impl prompt to paste into a fresh session: ...

[ task ships ]

claude: → agent_update({slug:'rate-limit-middleware', status:'merged', mergedCommit:'a1b2c3d'})
        → knowledge_create({
            agentSlug: 'rate-limit-middleware',
            slug: 'rate-limit-guard-ordering',
            kind: 'situational',
            content: 'Rate-limit guards must register AFTER auth guard in app.module.ts.
                      Order in providers array decides execution order. Reverse → 401s
                      bypass rate limiting.'
          })
        // ✅ lesson embedded → vector indexed → permanent memory

Next time anyone — you, Claude, Codex — touches anything rate-limit-shaped on this project, that lesson surfaces automatically.


Web panel

Agents registry — slug, status, branch, reserved-path count, timestamps

Knowledge browser — a fundamental lesson opened, metadata + content

Astro 6 + React 19 islands. Tailwind v4. shadcn/ui.

Page What
/ Landing
/projects Projects list — TanStack Table, sortable, filterable
/agents Registry / status board across projects
/knowledge Markdown viewer — GFM, syntax highlight, anchored sections, search
/plot Plot viewer + editor with diff preview
/settings Embedder URL + model + dim, tokenizer key, REST gate, log level

Settings stored in app_settings (SQLite) override env vars. Headless deploys still work via env alone.


Configuration

Both env vars and panel settings supported. Panel takes precedence.

Var Default Purpose
PORT 7776 HTTP port
CORS_ORIGIN unset * or comma-separated origins
ORCHESTRATOR_DB_PATH /data/orchestrator.db SQLite path. Dev scripts override to ./.local-data/orchestrator.db
PANEL_REST_ENABLED false Mount /api/orchestrator/* REST surface (panel uses it)
NODE_ENV unset Production blocks destructive migrations
ORCHESTRATOR_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE_MIGRATE unset Set 1 to override in production
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY unset Token-count endpoints (server-side only)
ANTHROPIC_TOKENIZER_MODEL claude-opus-4-7 Model name for count_tokens
EMBEDDER_URL unset HTTP embedding endpoint (Ollama / TEI / OpenAI-compatible). Unset → in-process embedder
EMBEDDER_MODEL Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-embed-m-v1.5 Model id (in-process default; passed through to HTTP embedder when configured)
EMBEDDER_DIM 768 Expected embedding dimension

Stack

Layer Tech
Memory sqlite-vec vector index • Snowflake Arctic Embed v1.5 in-process via Transformers.js (default) • Ollama / TEI / OpenAI-compatible embedders via EMBEDDER_URL • freshness-pinned vectors
API NestJS 11 • @rekog/mcp-nest@modelcontextprotocol/sdk 1.10 • Zod 4 • Swagger
Persistence better-sqlite3 (WAL, FK, busy_timeout 5s)
Diff engine diff 9 (zero-fuzz unified-diff applier)
Web Astro 6 • React 19 • Tailwind 4 • shadcn/ui • TanStack Table • rehype/remark • highlight.js
Tooling Turborepo 2 • pnpm 10.33 • TypeScript 5.9 • Prettier 3 • Jest

Scripts

pnpm dev          # turbo run dev — api + web in watch
pnpm build        # turbo run build
pnpm lint         # turbo run lint
pnpm check-types  # turbo run check-types
pnpm format       # prettier across ts/tsx/js/astro/md/json

pnpm -F @continuum/api dev          # api only — nest start --watch
pnpm -F @continuum/api mcp:dev      # api with local SQLite at .local-data/
pnpm -F @continuum/api test         # jest unit tests
pnpm -F @continuum/api test:e2e     # jest e2e

pnpm -F @continuum/web dev          # web only — astro dev
pnpm -F @continuum/web build        # astro build → dist/

Conventions

  • project is always a canonical absolute path. Pass the project root, never a worktree subdirectory. Worktree paths throw project_not_found.
  • Plot mutations flow through unified diffs. No full-text writes. Bad context → server rejects with the failing @@ header.
  • Knowledge updates are whole-content replace. Pass the full new content. Re-embedded on save.
  • Reserved paths are JSON arrays of globs. Only active agents reserve.
  • Migrations are forward-only on boot. Production blocks destructive migrations unless explicitly opted in.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Likely cause
project_not_found Passing a worktree path. Use the canonical project root registered with project_create.
hunk_mismatch from plot_update Stale diff. Re-read with plot, regenerate against current content, retry.
knowledge_search / knowledge_list returns empty / weird results Embedder unreachable, model mismatch, or dim mismatch (search only). Check /settings. Backfill stale vectors. Remember: both return metadata — call knowledge_get({project, slug}) for the body.
Vectors not regenerating after embedder swap Freshness profile (URL + model + dim) must change. Restart server to trigger backfill.
invalid_transition from agent_update Allowed: draft → active → merged | abandoned. Anything else throws.
missing_merged_commit / invalid_merged_commit merged requires a 7–40 char SHA.
Schema migration refuses in production Set ORCHESTRATOR_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE_MIGRATE=1 if you really mean it.

Roadmap

  • Cross-project knowledge sharing (kind: 'global')
  • Embedding re-rank with a small reranker model
  • One-shot import of existing CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / Cursor rules → fundamentals
  • Read-only public knowledge mirror (publish a project's lessons as a static site)
  • Built-in observation hooks for SessionStart / SessionEnd events

Contributing

Contributions welcome. Fork, branch, test, PR. Match Prettier defaults (100-col, double quotes, semicolons, ES5 trailing commas). Keep MCP tool changes Zod-typed.


Support

Issues GitHub Issues
Docs this README + Swagger UI at /docs + the seeded PLOT.md inside each project
MCP spec https://modelcontextprotocol.io

Stop letting your agents forget.

pnpm install && pnpm dev — and they never will again.

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Shared memory + orchestration for your coding agents — one MCP server, persistent vector memory, agent registry

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