- C++ 93.1%
- Python 2.4%
- Shell 1.6%
- Meson 1.6%
- Lean 0.7%
- Other 0.6%
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YAMS — Yet Another Memory System
Persistent memory for LLMs and apps. Content-addressed storage with dedupe, compression, full-text and vector search.
Warning
Experimental — not production ready. Expect bugs and breaking changes until 1.0.
Features
- SHA-256 content-addressed storage with block-level dedupe (Rabin chunking)
- Full-text search (SQLite FTS5) + semantic vector search (embeddings)
- Tree-sitter symbol extraction for 18 languages (list)
- Snapshot management with Merkle tree diffs and rename detection
- WAL-backed durability, high-throughput I/O, thread-safe
- CLI, MCP server, and C-ABI plugins (ONNX/GLiNER/ColBERT, S3 storage, PDF via ZYP)
- Interactive relevance tuning through CLI tuning and doctor workflows
Documentation
| Topic | Link |
|---|---|
| Install | docs/user_guide/installation.md |
| CLI reference | docs/user_guide/cli.md |
| MCP server | docs/user_guide/mcp.md |
| Embeddings | docs/user_guide/embeddings.md |
| Plugins | docs/PLUGINS.md |
| Build from source | docs/BUILD.md |
| Architecture | docs/architecture/ |
| Benchmarks | docs/benchmarks/README.md |
| Changelog | docs/changelogs/ |
| Roadmap | docs/roadmap.md |
Links
- SourceHut: https://sr.ht/~trvon/yams/
- GitHub mirror: https://github.com/trvon/yams
- Docs site: https://yamsmemory.ai
- Discord: https://discord.gg/rTBmRHdTEc
- License: GPL-3.0-or-later
Install
Supported: Linux x86_64/ARM64, macOS x86_64/ARM64, Windows x86_64.
# macOS
brew install trvon/yams/yams
# Docker
docker pull ghcr.io/trvon/yams:latest
# Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/RHEL, Windows: see installation guide
Full install matrix and package repos: docs/user_guide/installation.md.
Build from source
./setup.sh Release # Linux/macOS (auto-detects toolchain, runs Conan + Meson)
meson compile -C build/release
./setup.ps1 Release # Windows
meson compile -C build/release
Requires a C++20 toolchain (GCC 13+, Clang 16+, or MSVC 2022+ recommended), Meson, Ninja, CMake, pkg-config, and Conan. See docs/BUILD.md.
Quick Start
yams init # interactive; use --auto for headless
yams add ./README.md --tags docs
yams add src/ --recursive --include="*.cpp,*.h" --tags code
yams search "config file" --limit 5
yams grep "TODO" --include="*.cpp"
yams list --limit 20
yams get <hash> -o ./output.bin
Shell completions: yams completion bash|zsh|fish|powershell. Install instructions: docs/user_guide/cli.md#cmd-completion.
MCP Server
YAMS ships an MCP server over stdio (JSON-RPC) for AI assistants.
yams serve
{
"mcpServers": {
"yams": { "command": "yams", "args": ["serve"] }
}
}
Tool reference and MCP client setup: docs/user_guide/mcp.md.
Plugins
yams plugin list # loaded plugins
yams plugin trust add ~/.local/lib/yams/plugins # trust a directory
yams plugin health # status
yams doctor plugin onnx # diagnose
Plugin architecture, trust model, and bundled plugins (ONNX, S3, ZYP, GLiNER, symbol extractor): docs/PLUGINS.md.
GPU acceleration (ONNX)
| Platform | Provider | Hardware |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | CoreML | Apple Silicon Neural Engine + GPU |
| Linux | CUDA | NVIDIA GPUs |
| Linux | MIGraphX | AMD GPUs (ROCm) |
| Windows | DirectML | Any DirectX 12 GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel) |
Auto-detected at build. Override with YAMS_ONNX_GPU=auto|cuda|coreml|directml|migraphx|none. Details: plugins/onnx/README.md.
Simeon backend
YAMS uses simeon by default for both dense vector embeddings and lexical (BM25) search — no model download required. Set embeddings.backend = "simeon" in your TOML config (or leave it unset; simeon is the default). Fine-grained knobs live under [embeddings.simeon].
Full config reference and dim tradeoffs: docs/user_guide/embeddings.md.
Troubleshooting
yams doctor # full diagnostics
yams stats --verbose # storage statistics
yams repair --all # repair common issues
Build issues: docs/BUILD.md. Empty yams plugin list? Add a trust path: yams plugin trust add ~/.local/lib/yams/plugins.
Cite
@misc{yams,
author = {Trevon Williams},
title = {YAMS: Content-addressable storage with semantic search},
year = {2025},
publisher = {GitHub},
url = {https://github.com/trvon/yams}
}