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MemStrata MemStrata

First Project Setup

Once MemStrata is installed, these steps take it from idle to actively saving you tokens.

Step 1 — Index your codebase

Section titled “Step 1 — Index your codebase”

Navigate to your project root and run:

Terminal window
cd ~/my-project
memstrata index

MemStrata builds a local graph of your codebase — symbols, dependencies, call graphs, import chains. This is stored entirely in ~/memstrata/index.db.

Expected time:

  • ~500 files → 10–20 seconds
  • ~5,000 files → 60–90 seconds
  • ~50,000 files → 5–10 minutes (subsequent startups are incremental, under 5 seconds)

Step 2 — Start the harness

Section titled “Step 2 — Start the harness”
Terminal window
memstrata serve

The harness starts on localhost:8080. Leave this terminal open, or add memstrata serve to your shell profile / system startup (see install guide for your OS).

Verify it’s running:

Terminal window
curl http://localhost:8080/health
# {"status":"ok","version":"5.2.x","uptime_seconds":4}

Step 3 — Connect your AI tool

Section titled “Step 3 — Connect your AI tool”

Pick your integration:

Step 4 — See your first savings

Section titled “Step 4 — See your first savings”

Make a few AI requests through your tool. Then open the dashboard:

Terminal window
memstrata dashboard

The Money tab shows savings in real time. After your first few turns you’ll see:

  • Tokens sent (actual) vs. baseline
  • Dollar savings this session
  • Retrieval recall and precision

It takes 5–10 turns for the metrics to stabilize. The first turn includes the cold-start graph query — subsequent turns in the same session are faster.

Step 5 — Set your provider rate (optional)

Section titled “Step 5 — Set your provider rate (optional)”

MemStrata uses a default rate table for cost calculations. If you have a negotiated rate or use a local model, set it:

Terminal window
memstrata config set provider anthropic
memstrata config set provider-model claude-3-7-sonnet-20250219
memstrata config set provider-rate 3.00   # per million input tokens

The dashboard will use your custom rate for all dollar calculations from that point on.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”