Cognee

Local Cognee graph recall — read-first sidecar; capture and delete require approval.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add otto-haus/otto --skill cognee

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

2 things to look at

7 stars7 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
runs commandsInstructs the agent to run 4 commands, including `pip install cognee` and 3 more.

SKILL.md

1.4 KB, 340 tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

Cognee skill (local recall)

Triggers

cognee, graph recall, relationship context, cross-artifact recall, MCP cognee-local

When to use

Relationship recall across indexed Otto files (receipts, precedents, tickets)
Cited context packs before proposing Curation updates

When not to use

Canon edits (Standards, Practices, charters) — files + Curation only
Letta memory writes — Letta owns runtime memory
Autonomy policy changes — Otto-owned YAML

Local setup

pip install cognee
# venv recommended: ~/.otto/cognee/venv (binary is cognee-cli on 1.1.x)
export OTTO_COGNEE_ENABLED=1
./scripts/cognee-home.sh start
./scripts/cognee-home.sh health

MCP template: config/cognee-mcp.template.json (HTTP :8001 preferred on cognee 1.1.x; register only when health is ready).

Autonomy

cognee.recall: green (read-only search/recall)
cognee.capture: yellow (index ingest — receipt required)
cognee.delete: red (explicit approval)

Run autonomy.evaluateAction before capture or any mutating MCP tool.

Smoke

export OTTO_COGNEE_ENABLED=1
task smoke:cognee-recall

Writes receipts/cognee/recall/*.json when Cognee health is ready and a capture receipt exists. Never uses conversation=default.

What ships with it

Read from the repository

Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.