MCP server (read-only)

daimon mcp serve exposes daimon's memory as an MCP tool surface over stdio — for hosts that speak MCP but have no hook system daimon can attach to. It is opt-in (nothing registers it for you), read-only (five tools, no writes), and pure standard library (no extra dependency, same as the rest of daimon).

daimon mcp serve   # blocks, serves JSON-RPC on stdio until EOF

Tools

Tool	What it returns
daimon_recall	Search results with full provenance: trust class (verbatim = exact quote, inferred = model conclusion), author, origin project slug, and a status field in plain words when a row is resolved, superseded, or contradicted (null for a live row)
daimon_brief	The latest briefing for the current project — deterministic render, trust-tagged, resolutions withheld
daimon_projects	Every project daimon has memory for: slug, session, branch, last topic
daimon_status	Capture health: checkpoint freshness, last serialize result, outstanding failures, alarms — same payload as daimon status --json
requests_inbox	Requests other projects have addressed to this one — the read-only pull side of the cross-project request ledger. daimon_brief never carries this content; opening, answering, or deciding a request is CLI-only. Quarantined or forgotten text in its rows comes back as a marker or blank.

All five carry readOnlyHint. Item-id verbs exist on the CLI, the viewer and the in-process api; the MCP tools take no item id by design (pinned by test). Tool-level failures (bad arguments, missing FTS5) come back as isError results the agent can read; they never kill the server.

daimon_brief renders the same trust tags as the CLI, so a line may also carry the [≈ corroborated ×N] badge — a count of independent sessions that witnessed the claim, on its own axis and never a higher trust class. See trust classes.

Scoping rules

The server inherits daimon's cross-project discipline:

• Reads are project-scoped. The project is resolved from the process working directory, or DAIMON_PROJECT_DIR when set — put one of them in your host's MCP config.
• No implicit fallback. A project with no checkpoint gets no checkpoint for this project plus a pointer to daimon_projects — never another project's content. Crossing projects is always explicit: pass a slug to daimon_brief or daimon_recall.
• Kill switch honored. With DAIMON_DISABLE=1 the server exits cleanly without serving, so a disabled daimon never breaks host startup.
• Usage stays local. Each call writes one mcp:<tool> line to daimon's local usage log (the same daimon stats counters as the CLI). Nothing is transmitted.

Registering with a host

Every host daimon adapts now registers this server as part of its own install path — nothing to run by hand on any of them. The recall hint (the per-prompt "you worked on this before" line) names the tool instead of the daimon recall "..." shell command wherever a prompt-time recall hook exists; where one does not, the server is still worth registering, because the host's own agent can call the tool directly.

Host	MCP registration	Recall hint's tool form
Claude Code	supported	supported
Kimi Code	supported	supported
Codex	supported	supported
Windsurf	supported	unsupported (no prompt-time recall hook)
Gemini CLI	supported	unsupported (no prompt-time recall hook)

• Claude Code (plugin): the plugin install declares this server in .claude-plugin/plugin.json's mcpServers, so daimon_recall and its siblings are listed the moment the plugin is installed.
• Claude Code (CLI, without the plugin): claude mcp add daimon -- daimon mcp serve.
• Codex: daimon hooks install codex writes [mcp_servers.daimon] into ~/.codex/config.toml alongside its hooks.json registration. daimon hooks remove codex takes only that table back.
• Kimi Code: daimon hooks install kimi merges mcpServers.daimon into ~/.kimi-code/mcp.json (or $KIMI_CODE_HOME/mcp.json) alongside its config.toml hook registration, and its UserPromptSubmit command picks up the tool-form hint automatically once that entry exists.
• Windsurf: daimon hooks install windsurf prints an mcpServers snippet for ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json, the same way it already prints the hooks registration snippet — daimon does not write Cascade's own config files.
• Gemini CLI: the standalone hook/gemini-hooks.py install lifecycle manager registers mcpServers.daimon in ~/.gemini/settings.json alongside its two hooks, and removes it on uninstall.

Generic stdio MCP config (any other MCP-speaking host):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "daimon": {
      "command": "daimon",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve"],
      "env": { "DAIMON_PROJECT_DIR": "/path/to/your/project" }
    }
  }
}

If your host launches MCP servers from the project directory you can omit DAIMON_PROJECT_DIR — the working directory resolves the same way.

Note: on hosts where daimon's hooks already run, the hook briefing is the richer integration — the MCP server is for reads on demand and for hosts without hooks. Running both is fine; the tools are read-only.