yams/docs/install.md

Install and set up YAMS

YAMS runs entirely on your machine. Pick one install channel, run yams init, and your corpus lives under your own data directory. Nothing here needs an account or a hosted service.

Install

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install trvon/yams/yams

The formula installs prebuilt yams, yams-daemon and yams-mcp-server binaries plus shell completions for bash, zsh and fish. To run the daemon as a login service:

brew services start yams      # stop with: brew services stop yams

The Homebrew service logs to $(brew --prefix)/var/log/yams-daemon.log. A nightly formula, yams-nightly, tracks the experimental branch and conflicts with yams.

Debian and Ubuntu (APT)

curl -fsSL https://repo.yamsmemory.ai/gpg.key \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/yams-stable.gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/yams-stable.gpg] https://repo.yamsmemory.ai/aptrepo stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yams-stable.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install yams

The repository metadata (Release, InRelease) is signed with the YAMS Memory <packages@yamsmemory.ai> key.

Fedora, RHEL and derivatives (DNF/YUM)

sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/yams.repo <<'REPO'
[yams]
name=YAMS Repository
baseurl=https://repo.yamsmemory.ai/yumrepo/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://repo.yamsmemory.ai/gpg.key
REPO
sudo dnf makecache && sudo dnf install yams

The repository metadata is signed; the RPM files themselves are not, hence gpgcheck=0.

Arch Linux (pacman)

sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf <<'REPO'

[yams]
SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
Server = https://repo.yamsmemory.ai/archrepo/os/$arch
REPO
sudo pacman -Sy yams

Packages are built for x86_64 and aarch64. This repository is unsigned.

Docker

docker pull ghcr.io/trvon/yams:latest
docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$HOME/.local/share/yams:/home/yams/.local/share/yams" \
  -v "$HOME/.config/yams:/home/yams/.config/yams" \
  ghcr.io/trvon/yams:latest init

The image's entrypoint is yams. It runs as the yams user and keeps its corpus in /home/yams/.local/share/yams and its configuration in /home/yams/.config/yams; mount both to keep data between runs. Release tags are published as X.Y.Z, X.Y and X.

Windows

Download yams-<version>-windows-x86_64.msi from the latest release and run it. It installs per machine to %ProgramFiles%\YAMS and adds bin to PATH.

The MSI installs yams.exe, yams-daemon.exe and yams-mcp-server.exe in bin. It registers no Windows service; the CLI starts the daemon on demand. MSIs up to 0.20.3 lack the daemon and the MCP server.

Release archives and source

Every release also carries yams-<version>-linux-{x86_64,arm64}.tar.gz, .deb, .rpm, Arch .pkg.tar.zst, and yams-<version>-macos-{arm64,x86_64}.zip, with SHA256SUMS and a signature (SHA256SUMS.asc). To build from source, see BUILD.md.

Experimental channel

Package repositories for the experimental channel are not published yet; only the stable repositories above are live. To try experimental builds, use the Homebrew yams-nightly formula or build from source.

First run

yams init                     # writes config.toml and a signing key pair
yams add ./notes --recursive --tags notes
yams search "what did I decide about caching"
yams daemon status

yams init accepts --non-interactive, --auto, --force and --no-keygen. The CLI starts a per-user daemon on demand; you do not need to run a service for normal use.

Where things live

YAMS resolves every path once, in the same order for the CLI, daemon and MCP server. On Linux and macOS it follows the XDG base directories; macOS uses the same locations as Linux.

What	Linux and macOS	Windows
Config file	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/yams/config.toml (default ~/.config/yams/config.toml)	%APPDATA%\yams\config.toml
Data (corpus, databases)	$XDG_DATA_HOME/yams (default ~/.local/share/yams)	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams
State (sessions)	$XDG_STATE_HOME/yams (default ~/.local/state/yams)	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams\state
Cache	$XDG_CACHE_HOME/yams (default ~/.cache/yams)	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams\cache
Daemon socket	$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/yams-daemon.sock, else /tmp/yams-daemon-<uid>.sock	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams\yams-daemon.sock
Daemon log	$XDG_STATE_HOME/yams/daemon.log (default ~/.local/state/yams/daemon.log), rotated at 10 MB × 5	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams\daemon.log
User-installed plugins	~/.local/lib/yams/plugins	%LOCALAPPDATA%\yams\plugins
Plugin trust list	<data dir>/plugins.trust	same

Packaged binaries are installed under /usr/bin on Linux packages (yams, yams-daemon, yams-mcp-server), with bundled plugins in /usr/lib/yams/plugins.

Overriding paths

Highest precedence first:

• Config file: --config, then YAMS_CONFIG, then the default.
• Data directory: --data-dir, then core.data_dir in config.toml, then YAMS_DATA_DIR (or the older YAMS_STORAGE), then the default. A data directory set in config.toml wins over the environment variables.
• Daemon socket: --socket, then YAMS_DAEMON_SOCKET, then daemon.socket_path in config.toml, then the default.
• PID file: --pid-file, then daemon.pid_file, then the default.

If two aliases disagree (YAMS_DATA_DIR vs YAMS_STORAGE), YAMS refuses to guess unless a higher-precedence source decides. The full policy is in architecture/runtime-paths.md.

Running the daemon as a service

Linux packages

The deb, rpm and Arch packages ship a systemd user unit, /usr/lib/systemd/user/yams-daemon.service, and a user preset that enables it for every user (systemctl --global preset on install). The daemon runs as you, with the same paths as the CLI:

• config $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/yams/config.toml (default ~/.config/yams/config.toml)
• data $XDG_DATA_HOME/yams (default ~/.local/share/yams, or core.data_dir)
• socket $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/yams-daemon.sock (or daemon.socket_path)
• log $XDG_STATE_HOME/yams/daemon.log (default ~/.local/state/yams/daemon.log)

It starts with your next login session. To start it now, or after an upgrade:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now yams-daemon.service

The CLI needs no configuration to use it. yams daemon start, stop and restart drive the unit through systemctl --user when it is installed, and clients that start a daemon on demand start the unit (systemctl --user start) rather than a separate copy, as long as you have not pointed them elsewhere with --socket, --data-dir, YAMS_DAEMON_SOCKET, YAMS_DATA_DIR or YAMS_CONFIG. To keep the daemon running without a login session (for example on a server), enable lingering once: sudo loginctl enable-linger "$USER".

Plugins (ONNX embeddings, the glint entity extractor) load when your config enables them; yams init writes auto_load_plugins = true under [daemon]. Restart the unit after changing the config.

The ONNX and glint plugins load the first ONNX Runtime 1.23 or newer from:

1. runtime_library (a file or directory) under [plugins.onnx] or [plugins.glint] in config.toml;
2. a system copy: libonnxruntime.so.1 on the loader path, then the system library directories and /opt/onnxruntime/lib;
3. the bundled copy in lib/yams/onnxruntime/ (/usr/lib/yams/onnxruntime/ in the packages).

YAMS_ONNX_RUNTIME_LIB (a library file) or YAMS_ONNX_RUNTIME_DIR (a directory) overrides all three. yams plugin health and the daemon log line [ONNX] Using <source> ONNX Runtime <version> from <path> show which copy loaded.

The unit keeps its hardening light (NoNewPrivileges, LockPersonality, RestrictRealtime, RestrictSUIDSGID) so the daemon can read the files you add from your home directory and /tmp.

To opt out for your account: systemctl --user mask yams-daemon.service. An administrator can turn it off for everyone with sudo systemctl --global disable yams-daemon.service, or with a preset file in /etc/systemd/user-preset/ containing disable yams-daemon.service.

Upgrading reloads running user managers and restarts running user daemons. Removing the package stops running user daemons and disables the unit; it never touches ~/.local/share/yams.

Releases up to 0.20.3 installed a system service instead. Upgrading stops, disables and removes it. Its corpus in /var/lib/yams was effectively unused (the CLI never connected to that daemon); delete it with sudo rm -rf /var/lib/yams /var/log/yams /var/lib/private/yams /var/log/private/yams once you are sure it holds nothing you need.

Per-user systemd service without the packages

yams daemon install --user      # writes ~/.config/systemd/user/yams-daemon.service
yams daemon uninstall --user

When the packaged unit is installed, yams daemon install --user with no options just enables it (systemctl --user enable --now). With --socket, --data-dir, --config or --daemon-binary it writes ~/.config/systemd/user/yams-daemon.service, which overrides the packaged unit until yams daemon uninstall --user removes it. Run as root without --user, it writes a system unit in /etc/systemd/system.

Everyday daemon commands

yams daemon start | stop | restart
yams daemon status -d          # detailed status, including startup phases
yams daemon log -f             # follow the daemon log
yams daemon doctor

Settings worth knowing

All settings live in config.toml. examples/config.toml lists the full set; copy only the sections you change, because a copied data_dir or socket path replaces the defaults above.

Setting	Default	What it does
[core] data_dir	platform data dir	Where the corpus lives. yams init writes it.
[daemon] log_level	info	Daemon log verbosity.
[embeddings] enable	true	Set false to run text and grep search without embeddings.
[daemon.maintenance] vector_vacuum_interval_hours	24	How often idle maintenance checks whether vectors.db is worth compacting. 0 disables.
[daemon.maintenance] session_expiry_days	30	Idle session files older than this are removed. Sessions that are current, watch an existing directory, or still tag documents are kept. 0 disables.
[tuning.resource] host_pressure	true	Defer background work (topology rebuilds, repair scans, vacuum, backfills) while the machine is busy.
[tuning.resource] host_cpu_pressure_pct	40	CPU pressure (Linux PSI some avg10) above which the host counts as busy. Raise it on shared build hosts.
[tuning.resource] background_max_deferral_s	300	Longest background work waits before it runs anyway. 0 never defers.
[tuning] profile	balanced	efficient, balanced or aggressive resource use.

yams daemon status shows the current host load and which background work is deferred.

Connect an agent over MCP

yams serve

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yams": { "command": "yams", "args": ["serve"] }
  }
}

yams serve speaks MCP over stdio and talks to the local daemon; pass --daemon-socket (or set YAMS_DAEMON_SOCKET) to use a specific daemon.

Uninstall and removing your data

Removing the package leaves your corpus in place. To delete it, remove the data, state and config directories listed above (for example ~/.local/share/yams, ~/.local/state/yams and ~/.config/yams). Releases up to 0.20.3 also left an unused system corpus in /var/lib/yams.