A Zep alternative for coding agents' project memory

If you want a Zep alternative for coding agents, RepoMemory is built for that one job. It keeps a project's decisions, lessons, guardrails and tasks, and Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and any other MCP client read it before they change code. Zep is a context platform for enterprise agents. It turns chats, documents and business data into a knowledge graph of dated facts. It is the better choice when an agent must know a lot about your users and your business. RepoMemory is the better choice when the memory belongs to a codebase, and every agent working on it should know what was decided, tried and forbidden.

At a glance

Zep's figures are from its pricing page, search docs, Context MCP Server docs and the Graphiti repository, checked on 22 October 2026. RepoMemory's are on our pricing page.

How the two work

Zep takes in raw data as episodes: chat messages through thread.add_messages, and text or JSON through graph.episode.add, per its episodes docs. From each episode it derives entities and facts and links them into a graph. Each fact carries dates for when it became true and when it stopped, according to its facts docs. If a user says they now prefer Puma to Adidas, Zep tries to invalidate the old fact and adds the new one. The graph engine is Graphiti, which uses an LLM to extract entities and facts. You don't write memories one by one.

RepoMemory stores only what an agent or a person records, in one of five kinds. A coding agent records a lesson when a change is reverted, a decision when it picks one approach over another, and a guardrail for a rule nobody should break. Before its next change, it recalls with words about that change:

curl -s https://api.repomemory.dev/v1/recall \
  -H "X-API-Key: $REPOMEMORY_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"project":"acme/shop","query":"add a captcha to checkout"}'

{"project":"acme/shop","entries":[{"id":"KNOW-1","kind":"lesson",
 "title":"Captcha on checkout cut completed orders 5%",
 "body":"Shipped a captcha on the checkout page in March and reverted it after two weeks: completed orders fell 5%. Bots only spike on release days.",
 "tags":["checkout","captcha"],"status":"active","superseded_by":null,
 "reason":null,"claimed_by":null,"created_at":"2026-10-20T06:00:00.000000+00:00"}],
 "credits":0}

Agents use the same operations as MCP tools: brief, recall, record_entry, claim_task and retire_entry. A session starts with brief, which hands the agent every guardrail in full rather than leaving rules to a search. The docs show how to connect each client.

Where Zep is better

• Search that understands meaning. RepoMemory's recall matches words. A query has to share words with the entry ("captcha checkout"), not describe the symptom ("why did orders drop"). Zep combines semantic search with BM25 keyword search, and can rerank or walk the graph from a known node.
• No writing by hand. Zep derives facts from whatever you send it. With RepoMemory, an agent has to call record_entry. In practice, that means a few lines in CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md telling it when to.
• History of facts. Zep keeps when each fact was true and when it stopped, so an agent can ask what held at a point in time.
• Any kind of data. Zep ingests CRM records, tickets, documents and chats. RepoMemory holds short written entries about one project.
• Open source and your own cloud. Graphiti is Apache 2.0 and runs on Neo4j, FalkorDB or Amazon Neptune, and its repository includes an MCP server. Zep's Enterprise plan deploys inside your own cloud. RepoMemory is a hosted service only.
• Volume and compliance. Zep's free plan allows 10,000 credits a month, against RepoMemory's 300 new entries. Its Enterprise plan offers SOC 2 Type II, a HIPAA BAA and audit logs, and lets MCP users sign in through your own identity provider.

Where RepoMemory is better

• Made for a codebase. Guardrails, decisions, lessons and tasks are what a coding agent needs before it changes code. Zep is shaped around users, threads and business entities.
• You decide what holds now. Recording a new decision with supersedes retires the one it replaces. Recall leaves retired entries out unless you ask for them. Nothing is retired because a model judged two facts to clash, and nothing is "remembered" that nobody wrote down.
• Predictable recall. There's no LLM or embedding model in the loop, so the same query returns the same entries.
• Guardrails are never missed. brief returns every active guardrail at the start of a session, whatever the agent is about to change.
• Tasks for parallel agents. claim_task takes the oldest open task, or a named one, and returns a claim_token. Anyone without the token gets 409 already_claimed. A claim runs out after two hours unless renewed, so a crashed agent never holds a task for ever.
• An API key is enough. Any MCP client connects with an X-API-Key header. Zep's Context MCP Server signs users in through Google Workspace, or through your own identity provider on Enterprise.
• Built for shared, untrusted notes. Every result tells the agent the entries are notes, not instructions, and flags one worded like a prompt injection. Each entry records who wrote it. You can browse, edit, delete, export and import the ledger on the dashboard's Ledger page.
• Price for a small team. One shared ledger for the whole team costs $49 a month. Zep's first paid plan is $125 a month. A long RepoMemory entry is still one entry; Zep charges a credit per 350 bytes.

Choose Zep if

• your agent serves end users and should remember each of them
• you need context from business systems, documents and chats in one graph
• your queries are in natural language and won't share words with what's stored
• you need facts dated over time, or want to run Graphiti yourself
• you need SOC 2 Type II, a HIPAA BAA or a deployment in your own cloud

Choose RepoMemory if

• the memory belongs to a codebase and is shared by several agents and people
• you want reversed decisions retired on purpose, not by a model's judgement
• you run agents in parallel and need them to claim tasks
• you want to connect any MCP client with an API key
• you want to see, fix and export what your agents remember

If you're also weighing Mem0, see RepoMemory vs Mem0.

Try it

The free plan needs no card. Sign in, create a key, and add the MCP server to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http repomemory https://api.repomemory.dev/mcp \
  --header "X-API-Key: $REPOMEMORY_KEY"

Cursor, VS Code and Claude.ai use the same URL. See the docs for each, and pricing for the plans.