Installation

Option A: Local mode (recommended)

Run memlayer as a self-contained local process with file-backed storage at ~/.memlayer/.

Prerequisites

• Java 22+ (Adoptium or brew install openjdk)
• Clojure CLI (brew install clojure/tools/clojure)
• An OpenAI API key (for embeddings)
• A Groq API key (for LLM operations)

Clone and configure

git clone https://github.com/alenkis/memlayer.git
cd memlayer
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and fill in OPENAI_API_KEY and GROQ_API_KEY

Start the server

bb local-server

Verify

curl http://localhost:8090/health

You should get a 200 OK response with version info.

Native binary (optional)

If you have GraalVM 25+ installed, you can build a native binary that starts in milliseconds and needs no JVM:

bb local-native-image
./target/memlayer-local

Option B: Development mode

If you want to contribute to memlayer or need the full development server with auth and cloud integrations:

bb server    # starts on port 8080

See the README for details on the development setup.

Next steps

• Connect Your Agent — set up Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or any MCP client
• Quickstart: API — use the REST API directly with curl