Attest

Licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. Free to use, modify, and self-host. Cannot be offered as a competing managed service. Converts to Apache 2.0 after 4 years.

A brain for AI agents that actually learns. Give Claude Code, Cursor, OpenClaw, and any MCP-compatible agent a persistent knowledge system that tracks confidence, records what failed, detects gaps, and gets smarter every session. Free, open source, runs 100% locally.

pip install attestdb
attest brain install

What It Does

Your agent forgets everything between sessions. Attest Brain fixes that:

• Session recall -- prior knowledge (warnings, patterns, dead ends) injected at session start
• Pre-edit warnings -- known bugs and patterns surface before you edit a file
• Post-test fixes -- prior solutions appear when tests fail
• Negative results -- records what was tried and didn't work, so nobody repeats the search
• Confidence scoring -- every fact has a 0-1 score that updates as evidence arrives
• Contradiction resolution -- conflicting claims resolved with principled reasoning
• Gap detection -- finds what the brain doesn't know and flags it

Works with Claude Code, OpenClaw, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, and Gemini CLI.

Without Brain vs With Brain

	Without	With Brain
Same bug, second time	Debug from scratch (40 min)	Brain recalls the fix (3 min)
Preferences	Asks the same questions every time	Remembers and applies automatically
Dead ends	Re-investigates failed approaches	Skips known failures
Knowledge	Resets to zero each session	Compounds over time

Quick Start

import attestdb

db = attestdb.open("my_knowledge.db")

# Ingest a claim with provenance
db.ingest(
    subject=("BRCA1", "gene"),
    predicate=("associated_with", "relates_to"),
    object=("Breast Cancer", "disease"),
    provenance={"source_type": "database_import", "source_id": "PMID:12345"},
    confidence=0.9,
)

# Query the knowledge graph
frame = db.query("BRCA1", depth=2)
print(frame.focal_entity.name)
for rel in frame.direct_relationships:
    print(f"  --[{rel.predicate}]--> {rel.target.name} (conf={rel.confidence:.2f})")

db.close()

MCP Tools (84 total)

The brain exposes 84 MCP tools. Key ones for everyday use:

# Record knowledge
attest_learned("redis client", "v7 needs decode_responses=True", "warning")
attest_negative_result("session auth", "msgpack doesn't work for Redis 7 serialization")
attest_session_end("success", "Fixed auth tests after Redis upgrade")

# Recall knowledge
attest_get_prior_approaches("Redis serialization error")
attest_check_file("payment_handler.py")
attest_research_context("session management")

# Analyze knowledge
attest_blindspots()           # Find gaps
attest_confidence_trail("redis client")  # See confidence evolution
attest_predict("entity_a", "entity_b")   # Causal prediction via graph

CLI

attest brain install            # Install brain into your coding tools
attest brain status             # View brain statistics
attest brain uninstall          # Remove brain from coding tools
attest stats my.db              # Show database statistics
attest query my.db BRCA1        # Query knowledge around an entity
attest serve --port 8892        # Start MCP server (SSE/HTTP)

Under the Hood

Attest isn't a thin wrapper over SQLite or a vector store. It's a purpose-built claim-native database with a Rust storage engine.

• 1.3M claims/sec ingestion, 8us entity query (LMDB via heed)
• Atomic claims -- every fact is a (subject, predicate, object) triple with provenance
• Dual IDs -- claim_id (SHA-256, globally unique) + content_id (SHA-256 of S+P+O, for corroboration)
• 13 validation rules on every write
• Merkle audit chain -- tamper-evident append-only log
• Graph algorithms -- PageRank, betweenness centrality, SVD embeddings, causal prediction

Core Capabilities

• Provenance-tracked claims -- every fact has a source chain
• Confidence scoring -- evidence-weighted, updates on corroboration
• Confidence decay -- stale knowledge loses confidence over time
• Retraction with cascade -- db.retract("source_123") propagates downstream
• Contradiction resolution -- evidence-weighted voting across sources
• Snapshot/Restore -- db.snapshot(path) for backups
• Embedding index -- HNSW similarity search via usearch
• Multi-agent research -- agent registration, task queue, federation
• Negative results -- first-class claims that prune the search tree
• Enterprise RBAC -- groups, policies, entitlements for 10K+ orgs (enterprise)

Intelligence Layer (Enterprise)

LLM-powered features (curation, text extraction, connectors, insight engine) are available in attestdb-enterprise:

pip install attestdb-enterprise

Common Errors

ProvenanceError -- Every claim needs provenance={"source_type": "...", "source_id": "..."}. By design: claims without provenance can't be verified.

ImportError: requires attestdb-enterprise -- Methods like ingest_chat() and connect() need the enterprise package. Use db.ingest() for structured claims without it.

database is locked -- Only one process can write to a .attest file. Kill stale processes or use :memory: for testing.

Running Tests

pip install attestdb[dev]
pytest tests/unit/ tests/integration/   # ~1100 tests, <75s
cd rust && cargo test                   # Rust unit + golden vectors

Documentation

• attestdb.com/brain.html -- Brain landing page
• attestdb.com/quickstart.html -- Quick start guide
• docs/02_architecture.md -- Technical architecture
• docs/07_design_decisions.md -- Design decisions with rationale

License

Business Source License 1.1 -- free to use, modify, and self-host. Converts to Apache 2.0 after 4 years.