Cognee

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.