Core concepts

The mental model behind 4StaX — memory, vault, consent, and how they connect.

Core concepts

Understanding these four concepts will make everything else in the docs click.

Memory

A memory is a discrete, structured piece of context derived from your AI conversations. Not a raw transcript — a classified, ranked unit of information.

{
  content: "Prefers TypeScript. Dislikes class components.",
  type: "preference",
  domain: "engineering",
  importance: 0.8,
  created_at: "2026-03-27T00:00:00Z"
}

Memories are stored in your vault and retrieved selectively — only what’s relevant to the current session gets injected into the prompt. Not everything, not nothing.

The vault

Your vault is the encrypted store where memories live. You control it — locally with SQLite today, optionally synced to the 4StaX cloud when that ships.

Every read and write to the vault is logged in an immutable consent ledger. You can always see what was accessed, when, and by which application.

Relevance ranking

When your AI client needs context, kontxt doesn’t dump your entire memory archive into the prompt. It ranks candidates using four signals:

Signal	What it measures
Semantic similarity	How closely the memory matches the current task
Recency	How recently the memory was created or accessed
Access frequency	How often this memory has been useful before
Explicit importance	The importance score set when the memory was stored

The result is a compact, relevant bundle — not noise.

Memory types

Type	Examples
preference	Language choices, formatting preferences, communication style
fact	Your name, role, project names, tech stack
decision	Architectural decisions, tradeoffs made
summary	Condensed session summaries
instruction	Standing instructions for how AI should behave

MCP — how it connects

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the standard that lets AI clients talk to external tools and data sources. kontxt implements an MCP server that exposes your vault to any compatible client.

When you ask Cursor or Claude Desktop something, the MCP client calls kontxt’s tools, retrieves relevant memories, and injects them into your prompt automatically. You don’t see it happening — it just works.

Open source vs cloud

	kontxt (OSS)	4StaX cloud
Storage	Local SQLite	Hosted, encrypted
Sync	Single machine	Cross-device
Access	No account needed	Account required
Status	Available now	Waitlist

The MCP tool surface is identical between both. Integrations built on kontxt will work with 4StaX cloud without changes.