sbx/claude-mem-kit repository overview

⁠claude-mem

A mixin installing thedotmack/claude-mem⁠ — persistent context across Claude Code sessions: session activity is captured into SQLite+FTS5 under ~/.claude-mem/, compressed via the Agent SDK, and relevant memory is injected at session start. Installs claude-mem@latest (unpinned — see Design notes⁠ for why). The content is Claude-Code-specific, so the kit declares requires.agent: claude.

⁠Usage

Pair it with the built-in claude agent, from its published OCI artifact on Docker Hub:

sbx run --kit "docker.io/sbx/claude-mem-kit:latest" claude

Or from a git URL targeting this repo:

sbx run --kit "git+https://github.com/docker/sbx-kits-contrib.git#dir=claude-mem" claude

Search past sessions with the bundled mem-search skill or the mcp-search MCP tools. The worker (viewer UI + live activity stream) listens on port 37700:

sbx ports <sandbox> --publish 37700/tcp

⁠Design notes

• Unpinned version (@latest): this kit deliberately does not pin claude-mem to a specific release, unlike this repo's usual convention (see skills/kit-author/topics/authoring.md). claude-mem's own hook scripts compare the plugin's marketplace-tracked version against the installed worker's version and recycle (kill + respawn) the worker on any mismatch. Pinning the install to an older version than the marketplace metadata tracks causes a permanent mismatch, which sends every hook into a recycle loop that fails outright (worker unreachable, blocking Read/Bash/Stop hooks every call) — see upstream thedotmack/claude-mem#3378⁠, #3568⁠, #3161⁠, and the open tracking issue #3605⁠. Tracking @latest keeps the installed version aligned with the marketplace metadata in the common case, narrowing the mismatch window to the brief lag between a new claude-mem release and the marketplace catalog picking it up — at the cost of losing reproducibility across sandboxes created at different times, and inheriting whatever regressions ship in a new claude-mem release (claude-mem's issue tracker shows a fairly high rate of worker-lifecycle regressions). Re-introduce a pin if this trade proves worse in practice.
• Explicit --provider claude: mandatory for an unattended install. Since claude-mem v13.20.0 the installer aborts before doing any work when stdin is not a TTY and no provider was given, so the flag is what keeps this step from failing outright. claude is also the only provider that completes without interaction: it uses the sandbox's own Anthropic credentials, where the alternatives (CMEM Pro, Gemini, OpenRouter) need a browser OAuth pairing or a preconfigured personal API key. Upstream's README still describes the pre-13.20.0 behavior — see thedotmack/claude-mem#3893⁠.
• Settings reconciler: claude-mem's installer merges enabledPlugins into ~/.claude/settings.json, while the platform seeds the same file at startup only when missing — and the two race at sandbox creation. The kit ships an idempotent startup reconciler that ensures both the platform keys (SYNCed with the claude kit, driven by SBX_CRED_ANTHROPIC_MODE) and the enabledPlugins entry are present, never overwriting existing keys. Trace at /tmp/claude-mem-reconcile.log.
• Telemetry off at the source, scoped to claude-mem: upstream's PostHog telemetry is ON by default; the kit sets CLAUDE_MEM_TELEMETRY=0 and does not allow-list us.i.posthog.com. The cross-tool DO_NOT_TRACK convention is deliberately not set — it would silence the base claude kit and every other tool in the sandbox, which is not a mixin's call to make. The missing allow-list entry is the durable half of this: it holds even if upstream renames the variable.
• First memory compression uses your existing claude auth (the proxy wiring from the parent kit); first embed lazily downloads Chroma's ONNX model (~80MB, allow-listed S3 host).
• The installer auto-installs Bun and uv if missing (bun.sh / astral.sh are allow-listed for install time).

⁠Debugging

sbx exec <sandbox> -- cat /tmp/claude-mem-reconcile.log
sbx exec <sandbox> -- cat /home/agent/.claude/settings.json
sbx exec <sandbox> -- ls /home/agent/.claude-mem/