---

name: "core-memory" description: "Guides Cognee's primary memory workflows: remember, recall, improve, forget, add, cognify, and search." disable-model-invocation: true metadata: disco-role: operating license: Apache 2.0

Cognee Core Memory

Use this sub-skill when a user wants to store information in Cognee, turn it into a graph, query it back, or decide whether to use the newer memory API or the legacy pipeline API.

Route here for

• remember(...) / recall(...) / improve(...) / forget(...).
• Legacy add(...) / cognify(...) / search(...) when the user is already thinking in pipeline terms.
• Choosing between session memory and permanent graph memory.
• Understanding dataset names, dataset ids, node_set, background runs, and dry runs.
• Interpreting RememberResult and basic return shapes.

Route away

• Search-mode selection, temporal/code/agentic retrieval tuning: search-retrieval.
• Provider, storage, and database configuration: configuration-backends.
• Session/cache, agents SDK, feedback storage, and decorator flows: agent-session-memory.
• Custom graph models, ontologies, migration, and visualization: advanced-graphs-pipelines.
• CLI/service/MCP/Docker/UI launch: api-cli-services.

Read first

1. references/workflows.md
2. references/api-reference.md
3. references/troubleshooting.md

Safe helper

• scripts/cognee_memory_smoke.py — verifies the installed API surface and prints a safe summary without calling external services.

Working rules

• Prefer remember when the user wants a single “store + organize + recall later” flow.
• Prefer add + cognify + search when the user wants to reason about the pipeline stages separately.
• Use session_id only for session memory. Omit it for permanent graph memory.
• Use dry_run=True when the user wants a rough cost/size estimate without LLM calls.
• Use run_in_background=True for large or long-running jobs and explain how the returned object is awaited.
• Route any provider/database/path question to the configuration sub-skill instead of re-explaining the backend matrix here.