SAIHM — memory for AI agents
Portable memory for AI agents. Your assistant remembers what matters — across
sessions, across models, across vendors. Share a memory with someone else's
agent, take it back, or erase it for good.

AI assistants forget everything when the session ends. SAIHM gives yours a memory
that doesn't — one that follows you to a different assistant, a different model,
or a different company's product.
Everything is encrypted on your own machine before it goes anywhere, so nobody
else can read your memories. Not the storage, not SAIHM.
Start free — one command
npx -y @saihm/mcp-server-pro free-join
That's it. No card, no account to fill in, nothing to invent. It sets up your
identity on this machine and prints a one-time sign-in to confirm you're a real
person. Open the link, enter the short code, approve.
Then point your AI tool at it. This works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor,
Cline, and anything else that speaks MCP — add the "saihm" entry inside your
existing mcpServers section:
{
"mcpServers": {
"saihm": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@saihm/mcp-server-pro"],
"env": {
"SAIHM_ENDPOINT_URL": "https://saihm.coti.global/mcp"
},
"timeout": 60
}
}
}
Restart the connection and say "Recall my SAIHM memories." You're running.
Two details in that config are load-bearing:
- Keep
timeout: 60. Some tools allow as little as 1.5 seconds for a server
to start, which isn't long enough for npx to fetch and launch a package. A
server that misses the deadline is skipped silently — the tools simply never
appear, and nothing in the chat says why.
- No trailing commas. These files are strict JSON. A stray comma doesn't just
break this entry; it invalidates the whole file and every other tool you had
configured disappears with it.
Prefer not to touch a terminal? Add the config above first, then say "Join
SAIHM" to your assistant. It does the same setup for you.
Things to say
You don't call tools by name — you talk to your assistant. Some starters:
Liberally use SAIHM protocol to maximize token economy.
Recall my SAIHM memories before you start.
Remember that I prefer short answers and no preamble.
Set an invariant to doubly confirm before any SAIHM forget action.
Share that note with my colleague's agent until 5:00 pm today.
How much of my SAIHM allowance is left?
Forget everything I told you about the Henderson account.
saihm_remember | Encrypts on your machine, then stores it |
saihm_recall | Fetches and decrypts on your machine |
saihm_forget | Permanently erases. No undo |
saihm_status | Your usage and settings |
saihm_share | Grants one memory to one agent, optionally with an expiry |
saihm_revoke_share | Withdraws that grant |
Every tool is labelled for your AI tool to read, including which are read-only and
which one destroys data — so hosts that ask "are you sure?" before destructive
actions know when to ask. Two further tools, saihm_governance_propose and
saihm_governance_vote, are registered for a roadmap feature and are not yet
active.
"Forget" really means forget. The key to that specific memory is destroyed, so
the stored copy becomes permanently unreadable — by you, by SAIHM, by anyone
holding a backup of it. This is how SAIHM answers a GDPR Article 17 erasure
request, and it is why there is no undo.
Your memories follow your key
Your memory belongs to your key, not to a computer — that's what makes it
portable. The key is created on your machine during setup and never sent
anywhere, which is exactly why nobody else can read your memories. Keep a copy
of the key file somewhere safe. SAIHM cannot make you another one.
Setup prints the file's location when it runs — that's the line to keep. The same
key carries through if you upgrade to a paid plan: same identity, same memories,
nothing migrated.
Using a second computer? Two ways:
- Same memory, both machines — put your key file on the second machine, set up
the config there, and say "Recall my SAIHM memories."
- Work and personal kept apart — start fresh on the second machine and share
across instead: "Share these notes with my work agent until 5:00 pm." A share
can be revoked or given an expiry, so the two stay separate.
See it run
- Live demos across every major model — offline, about a minute each, no
account: https://citw2.github.io/saihm-demos/. Store a memory in Claude, GPT,
DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, or GLM, then prove you can erase it.
- Token benchmark — recalling a bounded set of memories instead of re-sending
the whole conversation cut input tokens by 62.8%–85.9% across a realistic
multi-session task. Open, offline, reproducible:
https://github.com/citw2/saihm-token-benchmark.
What it costs
Start free. The free tier is a fixed, one-time allowance of writes, reads, and
shares for trying SAIHM on real infrastructure — it doesn't reset or refill.
No card, and nothing to cancel. Your assistant shows what's left and warns you
as it runs low, so nothing fails by surprise.
Paid plans are monthly. Upgrading keeps the same key and every memory you already
have:
SAIHM_MASTER_SECRET_FILE=$HOME/.saihm/free-identity.key \
SAIHM_TIER=FREE \
npx -y @saihm/mcp-server-pro upgrade PRO
That prints a checkout link tied to your identity. Pay, then add two lines to your
config's env block and restart:
"SAIHM_TIER": "PRO",
"SAIHM_PAYMENT_METHOD": "stripe"
Both are needed — a paid plan without SAIHM_PAYMENT_METHOD refuses to start,
because that setting names which payment rail to check. stripe is one option;
stablecoin is another, and your assistant can tell you what your operator
accepts.
If something isn't working
| No SAIHM tools appear, and no error anywhere | timeout too low — see the config above |
| Every other tool vanished too | A trailing comma broke the settings file |
| Tools appear but every call fails | SAIHM_ENDPOINT_URL unreachable |
| "no identity" | Setup hasn't run on this machine yet |
| A different memory than you expected | This machine has its own key rather than yours |
status mentions seq-state | A small local safeguard file couldn't be read or written. Your memories are unaffected — see SAIHM_SEQ_STATE_PATH below |
forget worked but mentions a feed | The erasure stands — only the notification line couldn't be written. See SAIHM_ERASURE_FEED below |
How it works
In plain terms. Everything is encrypted on your machine before it is sent, and
decrypted on your machine after it comes back. What's stored is unreadable
ciphertext and no key that opens it. To erase something, its key is destroyed —
which is why erasure is immediate and final rather than a promise that a copy was
deleted somewhere.
For the technically inclined.
- Encrypt before send —
remember encrypts client-side; recall decrypts
client-side. Your plaintext, master secret, and key-encryption key never leave
this process.
- Post-quantum — ML-DSA-65 for identity and signing, ML-KEM-768 for
authenticated sharing, via
@saihm/client-pro.
- Crypto-shred erasure —
forget destroys the endpoint-side wrapped
data-encryption key, rendering the cell undecryptable (GDPR Art. 17).
- Erasure that travels —
forget also appends one line to a per-identity
feed, so anything that derived from a cell — an index, a mirror, an extracted
fact — can be told to drop it too. An erasure that stops at this substrate is
not an erasure. On by default; SAIHM_ERASURE_FEED=0 turns it off.
- Standard transport —
POST {method, params} with
Authorization: Bearer <JWT>; the endpoint binds your tenant from the JWT.
HTTPS only, with loopback http permitted for local development.
- Self-onboarding — with no
SAIHM_AUTH_HEADER set, the client proves control
of your identity and mints its own short-lived token, refreshing transparently.
You paste one config once and never re-paste a token. Cancelling a subscription
stops the next refresh, so access ends naturally.
Security model
| Confidentiality vs the endpoint | The endpoint holds ciphertext, wrapped DEKs, and public keys only — no key able to decrypt. |
| Integrity / authenticity | Every cell is ML-DSA-65-signed over its contents, including the sequence number. |
| Anti-replay | The signed monotonic sequence is rejected by the endpoint if it does not strictly increase. |
| Tenant isolation | Your agentIdHash (the JWT sub) namespaces your state; a write whose signed identity differs from the JWT is rejected. |
| Authenticated sharing | Grantee public keys are pinned out-of-band and verified before any secret is bound to them; on the recipient side, recallShared pins the sharer's key and verifies the cell signature before returning any plaintext. |
| Erasure | Destroying the endpoint-side wrapped DEK crypto-shreds the cell. |
| Erasure cascade | Each forget appends one line to $SAIHM_HOME/tenants/<agentIdHash>/erasures.ndjson. The line carries the cell id, the identity and the time — never cell content. |
Where encrypted cells are stored
This client encrypts cells and hands the ciphertext to whichever operator endpoint
SAIHM_ENDPOINT_URL points at; that operator chooses and configures the durable
storage behind it — typically a local IPFS / Kubo node first, then a Filecoin
deep-archive provider. Storage is operator-configured by design: the protocol
never locks anyone to a single provider. Running your own endpoint means
provisioning that storage yourself.
Prefer not to run storage at all? The hosted operator at
https://saihm.coti.global provides durable storage and is non-custodial —
because this client encrypts every cell locally, the hosted operator only ever
stores ciphertext and never holds a key.
Configuration
Most people need none of this: the setup above sets one variable and the rest have
working defaults.
SAIHM_ENDPOINT_URL | no | https://…/mcp (or http:// for 127.0.0.1/localhost only). Defaults to https://saihm.coti.global/mcp — set it only to reach a different operator. |
SAIHM_MASTER_SECRET_FILE | see note | Path to a mode-600 file holding the hex master secret. The preferred way to supply a key, because it keeps the key out of a config file that may be synced or shared. Takes precedence over SAIHM_MASTER_SECRET_HEX. |
SAIHM_MASTER_SECRET_HEX | see note | The master secret inline, ≥ 64 hex characters (≥ 32 bytes), high-entropy, client-held, never sent. Prefer the file form: anything inline lands in the config file itself. |
SAIHM_SELF_JOIN | no | Controls the saihm_join onboarding tool — the one that answers "Join SAIHM". On by default; set to 0 to remove it and expose only the canonical eight tools. |
SAIHM_HOME | no | Where the identity file lives ($SAIHM_HOME/free-identity.key, mode 600), where per-restart bookkeeping is kept, and where the erasure feed is written unless SAIHM_ERASURE_FEED_DIR overrides it. Defaults to ~/.saihm. |
SAIHM_AUTH_HEADER | no | Bearer <JWT>, used verbatim. Omit to self-onboard (recommended) — the client mints and refreshes its own token, so there is nothing to paste or re-paste. |
SAIHM_TIER | self-onboard only | Plan label recorded in encrypted metadata (FREE, PRO, …). Required when self-onboarding; otherwise resolved via status(). |
SAIHM_PAYMENT_METHOD | paid self-onboard | Entitlement rail (stripe, stablecoin, …) for a paid plan. Not used by the free tier. Ignored when SAIHM_AUTH_HEADER is set. |
SAIHM_SEQ_STATE_PATH | no | Overrides where the anti-rollback bookkeeping is written. Running as an MCP server this is on by default at $SAIHM_HOME/seq.<id>.json; set it only to relocate it. The default location is ours to manage: if it can't be written, the tally stays in memory for the session and status says so. A location you set is yours: if it can't be written, calls fail and name the path, so a safeguard you asked for never goes quiet without telling you. status reports this as seq-state=… followed by rollback-guard=persisting (writes still work, so the next one rewrites the file) or memory-only-this-run (it retries at the next restart). Either way, if the file couldn't be READ at startup the safeguard starts from scratch and rebuilds as each memory is next read — so an older copy of a memory would not be caught during that window. At the default location that window is about accidental corruption rather than an attacker: writing to that file takes the same access that reads the identity key sitting beside it. Somewhere you relocate it to, that no longer follows — give it the protection you give $SAIHM_HOME. |
SAIHM_STATE_DIR | no | Where transient operator state (such as checkout-url.txt) is written. Does not relocate your identity or its bookkeeping. |
SAIHM_ERASURE_FEED | no | Controls the erasure feed — one line appended per forget, so a consumer can drop whatever it derived from that cell. On by default; set to 0 to write nothing. Writing the line can never fail an erasure: the erasure is what you asked for and the line is a notification about it, so a feed that can't be written is reported beside the result and the erasure still stands. |
SAIHM_ERASURE_FEED_DIR | no | Overrides the feed's root. Defaults to SAIHM_HOME, then ~/.saihm; the feed itself is at <root>/tenants/<agentIdHash>/erasures.ndjson, and the directory is created the first time a tool runs. Must be an absolute path — a relative one resolves against the working directory, so one identity would write to a different file depending on where the process started while a consumer reported the feed missing. Deliberately not SAIHM_STATE_DIR: a feed is identity-scoped, so it has to move with the identity or not at all, and a consumer refuses a line from an identity it is not watching. |
Note: a master secret is required, from one source or the other — but setup
creates and configures it for you, which is why the config above has neither.
For developers
npm install @saihm/mcp-server-pro
import { SaihmProClient } from '@saihm/mcp-server-pro';
const saihm = SaihmProClient.bootFromEnv();
const { cellId } = await saihm.remember('remember this');
const cell = await saihm.recallOne(cellId);
console.log(cell?.plaintext);
const matches = await saihm.recall('this');
await saihm.remember('new contents', { cellId });
await saihm.forget(cellId);
await saihm.share({
cellId,
recipientRecord,
recipientPinnedAgentIdHashHex,
expiryEpoch,
});
await saihm.revokeShare(cellId, recipientPinnedAgentIdHashHex);
const shared = await saihm.recallShared({
sharerPinnedAgentIdHashHex,
sharerRecord,
cellId,
});
console.log(shared?.plaintext);
const status = await saihm.status();
The derived saihm.agentIdHash is the sub the endpoint binds your tenant to —
when self-onboarding the client proves it via ML-DSA; with a static
SAIHM_AUTH_HEADER it must equal the JWT sub. Publish saihm.identityRecord so
other agents can share to you.
Constructing SaihmProClient directly writes nothing to your home directory; the
per-restart bookkeeping is opted into by the MCP server's boot path, or by setting
SAIHM_SEQ_STATE_PATH explicitly.
Errors. Non-2xx responses throw SaihmEndpointError carrying status and a
typed code (e.g. BLIND_BAD_EXPIRY, BLIND_STALE_SEQ,
governance_unavailable). Branch on the code rather than the message.
License
Apache-2.0 © SAIHM