Zilliz, the company behind Milvus—the world's most widely adopted open-source vector database—has announced the open-source release of memsearch, a lightweight library that provides AI agents with persistent, long-term memory across conversations. Released under the MIT license, memsearch was derived from the memory subsystem built for OpenClaw, the autonomous AI agent that gained over 189,000 GitHub stars in under two weeks, and re-engineered as a standalone, developer-friendly tool.
The AI agent ecosystem often struggles with memory loss: conversations end, and agents forget context, user preferences, and prior decisions, requiring repetitive inputs. Current solutions frequently rely on proprietary, opaque formats that limit developer access, inspection, correction, or migration of learned information.
Memsearch addresses this by storing all agent memories as plain-text files that are fully human-readable, editable, and version-controllable. Milvus automatically indexes these files for fast, accurate semantic retrieval at scale.
"Memory is the missing layer in the AI agent stack. Developers deserve to know what their agents remember, fix it when it's wrong, and carry it forward without lock-in. memsearch is our answer to that—transparent, portable, and built on the open-source foundation the community already trusts." — Jiang Chen, Head of Developer Relations, Zilliz
Quick Intel
Key Benefits for Developers
Full transparency ensures every memory is visible in human-readable text files—no proprietary tools needed. Developers can inspect exactly what the agent knows.
Easy correction allows fixes by simply editing a file, with memsearch automatically detecting changes—no retraining or complex pipelines required.
Team collaboration benefits from standard file-based storage, supporting Git commits, pull requests, reviews, and rollbacks for agent memory management.
True portability means switching environments, models, or providers involves only copying files—no exports, migrations, or vendor dependencies.
Plug-and-play integration installs via a single command and works seamlessly with any AI agent framework without infrastructure modifications.
Dedicated Plugin for Claude Code
Zilliz also launched the memsearch ccplugin, a specialized persistent memory extension for Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding assistant. Long coding sessions build valuable context—architecture choices, debug history, conventions, preferences—that typically vanishes between sessions. The plugin automatically summarizes sessions and injects relevant prior context at the start of new ones, enabling Claude Code to maintain continuity. Installation is straightforward with one command.
Availability
memsearch is immediately available as free, open-source software under the MIT license.
GitHub: github.com/zilliztech/memsearch Documentation: zilliztech.github.io/memsearch Claude Code Plugin: zilliztech.github.io/memsearch/claude-plugin
For in-depth technical details on architecture and the plugin, refer to the Zilliz engineering blog.
This release strengthens the open-source AI agent ecosystem by providing transparent, scalable memory that developers can own and evolve—removing barriers to building reliable, context-aware agents.
About Zilliz
Zilliz is the company behind Milvus, the world's most widely adopted open-source vector database. Zilliz Cloud brings that performance to production with a fully managed, cloud-native platform built for scalable, low-latency vector search and hybrid retrieval. It supports billion-scale workloads with sub-10ms latency, auto-scaling, and optimized indexes for GenAI use cases like semantic search and RAG. Zilliz is built to make AI not just possible—but practical. With a focus on performance and cost-efficiency, it helps engineering teams move from prototype to production without overprovisioning or complex infrastructure. Over 10,000 organizations worldwide rely on Zilliz to build intelligent applications at scale. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Zilliz is backed by leading investors, including Aramco's Prosperity 7 Ventures, Temasek's Pavilion Capital, Hillhouse Capital, 5Y Capital, Yunqi Partners, Trustbridge Partners, and others.
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