Kept

Kept saves your AI conversations as local Markdown files, then gives you a desktop app to search, browse, connect, and reuse them.

It works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Kimi. Your archive lives on your machine under ~/.kept/, with an Obsidian-compatible vault plus local indexes for full-text search, topics, projects, and graph views.

Quick Install | Download | Setup | Build from source | MCP server

Why Kept

AI chats often become working memory: debugging trails, research notes, product decisions, prompts, snippets, and half-finished ideas. Most of that history stays inside vendor UIs.

Kept turns it into files you own.

• Plain Markdown, grouped by provider.
• Fast local search with SQLite FTS5.
• Graph and topic views for finding connections across old conversations.
• Optional chat over your own archive using the model provider you configure.
• An MCP server so coding agents can read, search, and manage the vault.

How It Works

Chromium browser extension
  -> reads conversations from provider API endpoints using your signed-in session
  -> normalizes messages and supported image assets
  -> sends them to the Kept desktop app on http://localhost:18241

Kept desktop app
  -> writes Markdown files to ~/.kept/vault/
  -> indexes content in SQLite
  -> builds a local knowledge graph in CozoDB
  -> exposes search, graph, project, export, and agent tools

MCP server
  -> lets Claude Code, OpenClaw, and other MCP clients work with the vault

Kept does not scrape rendered chat pages. The extension syncs conversation data from provider API responses and hands the normalized payload to the local app.

Supported Providers

Provider APIs are private and can change without notice. Kept keeps the archive as plain files so your saved conversations stay readable even if an adapter needs an update.

Quick Install

Windows PowerShell:

irm https://kept.work/install.ps1 | iex

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash

The installer downloads the latest GitHub Release, installs the desktop app, and extracts the Chromium extension to a local folder. Browsers still require you to load the extension manually in Developer Mode.

The same scripts can be run directly from GitHub:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Download

Desktop builds are published on GitHub Releases.

Current release targets:

• macOS Apple Silicon: .dmg
• Windows x64: NSIS .exe installer
• Linux x64: .deb and .AppImage

The release also includes the Chromium extension package. Until the Web Store listing is live, install the extension in developer mode.

Setup

1. Install The Desktop App

Use the Quick Install command above, or download the build for your OS from Releases, install it, and launch Kept.

On first launch, Kept creates:

~/.kept/
  vault/
  index.db
  kg.db/
  config.toml
  token

The app also starts a local server on http://localhost:18241. The browser extension uses this local server to send conversations into the vault.

2. Load The Browser Extension

Kept supports Chromium-based browsers: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Arc, Opera, and Chromium.

1. Extract the extension from the release, or use extension/ from this repo.
2. Open your browser's extensions page, for example chrome://extensions.
3. Enable Developer Mode.
4. Click Load unpacked.
5. Select the extension/ directory.

3. Connect The Extension

With the Kept app running, open this page in the same browser:

http://localhost:18241/connect

That page gives the extension its per-install token. After that, use the extension popup or Kept onboarding flow to sync your providers.

Vault Layout

Kept writes conversations as Markdown with YAML frontmatter:

~/.kept/vault/
  chatgpt/
    2026-05-02_optimizing-cuda-kernel.md
  claude/
    2026-05-02_kept-readme-draft.md
  gemini/
  grok/
  kimi/

You can open ~/.kept/vault/ directly in Obsidian, VS Code, or any editor. The files are the source of truth; the search and graph databases can be rebuilt from them.

MCP Server

mcp/ is an MCP server named kept-vault-server. It lets agentic clients list, read, write, search, rename, and delete files in your Kept vault.

Inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add egroup-labs/kept.work
/plugin install kept-vault@kept-plugins

One-line installer for Linux and macOS:

bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install-kept-mcp.sh)

PowerShell:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install-kept-mcp.ps1)))

Set KEPT_VAULT_PATH if your vault is not at ~/.kept/vault.

Tools exposed by the server:

• list_vault
• list_directory
• read_file
• write_file
• update_file
• delete_file
• move_file
• grep_vault

Build From Source

Requirements:

• Node.js 20+
• Rust toolchain
• A Chromium-based browser
• Optional: Ollama for local models and embeddings

git clone https://github.com/egroup-labs/kept.git
cd kept/app
npm ci
npm run tauri dev

Linux Dependencies

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install -y \
  build-essential clang libclang-dev pkg-config \
  libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libsoup-3.0-dev \
  libpango1.0-dev libcairo2-dev libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-dev libglib2.0-dev

build-essential, clang, and libclang-dev are required for Rust crates that use bindgen (e.g. zstd-sys pulled in by CozoDB). The rest are the GTK / WebKitGTK / GLib stack Tauri 2 links against.

Then run:

npm run tauri:dev:linux

Frontend-Only Mode

You can run the UI against mock data without the Rust app:

cd app
npm ci
npm run dev

Vite serves the UI at http://localhost:1420.

Repository Layout

app/                Tauri 2 desktop app
  src/              React frontend
  src-tauri/        Rust backend, Axum server, vault, search, graph, agent tools
extension/          Chromium extension
  platforms/        Provider sync adapters
mcp/                MCP server for the vault
scripts/            App and MCP install scripts

Privacy And Security

• Core archive and search data stays on your machine in ~/.kept/.
• The extension talks to the desktop app over localhost and must include the bearer token stored at ~/.kept/token.
• Kept has no hosted account and no cloud sync.
• Optional chat, topic discovery, and graph features call only the model provider you configure, or your local Ollama server.
• The updater checks the configured Kept update endpoint for new desktop releases.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Conventional commits are preferred:

feat(scope): add ...
fix(scope): repair ...

Useful areas to start:

• extension/platforms/ for provider adapters
• app/src-tauri/src/vault.rs for vault writes
• app/src-tauri/src/db.rs for search indexing
• app/src-tauri/src/kg-gen/ for graph generation
• mcp/src/ for MCP vault tools

License

MIT