Context Optimizer

Cuts AI prompt context by 90–99% and reduces API costs by $70–$140 per 1,000 queries.

A local-first Model Context Protocol (MCP) server suite that gives AI coding assistants persistent long-term memory and high-speed codebase discovery — eliminating context amnesia and token waste across every session.

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The Problem

Modern AI coding assistants (Claude, Cursor, Copilot) suffer from two compounding problems:

• Context amnesia — Every new session starts from zero. Architectural decisions, past mistakes, and established patterns must be re-explained each time.
• Token waste — To answer a simple question, the AI blindly reads thousands of lines of source code, burning tokens on irrelevant logic before finding anything useful.

Context-Optimizer-MCP solves both.

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Benchmark Results

Tested against this codebase (21 source files, 58,808 raw tokens) across 15 diverse query types — from narrow configuration lookups to broad architectural questions.

Metric	Value
Minimum context reduction	97.4%
Median context reduction	99.81%
Maximum context reduction	99.9%

Run it yourself:

python benchmark.py

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│         AI Agent (Claude / Cursor)          │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
                │ MCP Protocol
    ┌───────────┴────────────┐
    │                        │
┌───▼──────────┐    ┌────────▼────────┐
│ Memory       │    │ Discovery       │
│ MCP Server   │    │ MCP Server      │
│              │    │                 │
│ Stores and   │    │ AST + Regex     │
│ retrieves    │    │ codebase scan   │
│ decisions,   │    │ → endpoints,    │
│ mistakes,    │    │   queries,      │
│ observations │    │   tech debt     │
└──────┬───────┘    └────────┬────────┘
       │                     │
       └──────────┬──────────┘
                  │
          ┌───────▼────────┐          ┌──────────────────┐
          │  SQLite DB     │◄────────►│  ai-memory.yaml  │
          │  mcp_memory.db │  cli.py  │  (Git-tracked)   │
          └───────┬────────┘          └──────────────────┘
                  │
          ┌───────▼────────┐
          │ FastAPI +       │
          │ React Dashboard │
          └────────────────┘

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Core Components

Memory MCP Server

Persistent SQLite-backed memory for AI agents. Stores decisions, mistakes, and observations with full lifecycle management.

• Semantic deduplication — Embeds incoming memories (Gemini text-embedding-004 / OpenAI text-embedding-3-small) and runs cosine similarity in RAM. Similarity ≥ 0.85 triggers a merge instead of a new insert, incrementing the existing memory's confidence score. Falls back to exact-string matching when no API key is present.
• Staleness tracking — Classifies memories as fresh (<30 days), warming (30–90 days), or stale (>90 days) based on last validation timestamp. Auto-migrates older databases on startup.
• Memory pruning — mem_prune deletes unreinforced one-off entries (confidence == 1.0) older than N days, with dry-run mode on by default.

Discovery MCP Server

Scans codebases structurally using AST parsing and regex — extracts API endpoints, database queries, class/function maps, and # TODO debt markers without reading implementation logic line-by-line.

Produces a lightweight "blueprint" of the project that the AI can query in ~150 tokens instead of reading the full source.

Context Engine (FastAPI)

The search backend bridging agents and storage.

• Dual-mode semantic search — Uses vector embeddings when API keys are present; falls back to TF-IDF + cosine similarity for fully offline, zero-setup retrieval.
• Context compression — Retrieves, ranks, and compresses relevant memories and code structures before passing them to the LLM.

React Dashboard

Local UI for auditing the AI's memory state.

• Trigger codebase scans manually
• Search memories with Google-style queries
• Verify/refresh warming and stale memory cards with a one-click checkmark (✓)
• View AST blueprints of the current project structure

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Key Design Decisions

Cross-agent portability. Memory is stored in open SQLite — no vendor lock-in. Switch from Claude to Gemini tomorrow; the new agent inherits the full project history instantly.

Git-friendly memory sync. The binary .db file is not committed directly. cli.py export converts it to a human-readable ai-memory.yaml. Teams commit the YAML, and cli.py import --merge rebuilds the database on each machine using the semantic dedup engine to resolve conflicts rather than overwriting.

Zero mandatory dependencies. No API key required to run. Semantic search degrades gracefully to TF-IDF offline mode. The whole system works on an air-gapped machine.

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Installation

Requirements: Python 3.10+, Node.js (only needed if rebuilding the dashboard; precompiled build included)

# 1. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/your-username/Context-Optimizer-MCP.git
cd Context-Optimizer-MCP
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 2. Configure environment (API keys optional)
cp .env.template .env
# Add GEMINI_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY to enable semantic search
# Leave blank for offline TF-IDF mode

# 3. Import memory from Git history
python cli.py import

# 4. Start the dashboard
python context_engine/server.py
# Open http://127.0.0.1:8000

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Connecting to AI Clients

Cursor

Settings → Cursor Settings → Features → MCP → + Add New MCP Server

Field	Value
Name	memory-server
Type	command
Command	python -u "C:/path/to/Context-Optimizer-MCP/mcp_servers/memory_server.py"

Repeat for discovery-server using discovery_server.py.

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codebase-memory": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["C:/path/to/Context-Optimizer-MCP/mcp_servers/memory_server.py"]
    },
    "codebase-discovery": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["C:/path/to/Context-Optimizer-MCP/mcp_servers/discovery_server.py"]
    }
  }
}

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CLI Reference

# Export SQLite → YAML (for Git)
python cli.py export

# Rebuild SQLite from YAML
python cli.py import

# Merge YAML into existing DB (semantic dedup on conflicts)
python cli.py import --merge

# Preview stale memories eligible for pruning (dry run)
python cli.py prune --days 90 --confidence 1.0

# Execute pruning
python cli.py prune --days 90 --confidence 1.0 --execute

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Tests

python -m unittest tests/test_memory_discovery.py

10 integration tests covering deduplication logic, YAML sync, staleness scoring, pruning, and benchmark validation. All passing.

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Tech Stack

Python · FastAPI · SQLite · React · Vite · Model Context Protocol (MCP) · Google Gemini Embeddings · OpenAI Embeddings · TF-IDF / Cosine Similarity

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License

MIT