Last Updated: 7/24/2026

Connect Memory to Your AI Assistant (MCP)

Jolli Memory captures the reasoning behind your commits. This page connects that memory to your AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), so the assistant can read your history from inside the chat. No terminal, no copy-paste.

Ask “what did we decide about auth?” or “recall this branch,” and the assistant answers from your real stored Memories instead of guessing.

What you get

Enabling Jolli exposes a set of tools to your AI assistant. Most are read-only; a couple write on your behalf (push_memory and bind_space publish to and bind a Jolli Space, covered below). Four read tools cover the everyday “remember what we did” job:

• search - Ask “have we handled rate limiting before?” and the assistant searches every branch’s Memories for the answer.
• recall - Ask it to recall a branch and it loads that branch’s full context: decisions, plans, notes, and commits.
• get_decision_timeline - Ask how a decision evolved and it traces that topic across commits, oldest first.
• list_branches - Ask which branches have Memories and it lists them with their topics.

You ask in plain language. The assistant picks the tool and answers in the chat.

Also available: get_pr_description and queue_status power the pull-request workflow (see Create PR in Getting Started with Jolli Memory); bind_space, list_spaces, and push_memory back Share in Jolli (see Jolli Spaces); and status reports the health of your Jolli setup for this repo - which hooks are installed, your hook runtime, account and API-key configuration, detected AI integrations, and your stored-Memory count. You never call these by name; your assistant reaches for them when the task calls for it.

When you are signed in, the server may also register additional Jolli-hosted tools defined by the backend, so your assistant can see more than the built-ins listed above. Set mcpPlatformToolsEnabled to false for a built-ins-only server.

Automatic setup

Jolli’s MCP server is CLI-hosted: a local stdio process - jolli mcp - that each host spawns on your own machine and talks to over standard input and output, registered under the server key jollimemory. There is no remote URL and no .well-known/mcp.json, so there is nothing to point a hosted or cloud MCP client at; your Memories never leave your machine to be queried.

There is no separate MCP install. When you enable Jolli in a repo, the jollimemory server is registered for you into every supported AI host that Jolli detects on your machine:

Claude Code and Cursor are configured per repo. The other five share one machine-wide config. A host is wired up only if Jolli detects it, so if you install a new assistant later, run jolli enable again to register it.

All three Jolli surfaces register the server:

• CLI - jolli enable from the repo root.
• VS Code (or a fork such as Cursor or Windsurf) - Enable Jolli Memory in the Status panel.
• IntelliJ - Enable in the tool window. IntelliJ needs Node.js on your PATH for the MCP server and the /jolli-search skill; the plugin sets them up by running its bundled CLI. Without Node, those are skipped cleanly and the tool window shows “MCP & Skills: Node.js not found.” The /jolli-recall skill still installs (it ships natively with the plugin, no Node needed), and memory generation keeps working through the plugin’s native hooks.

Any other MCP host

Only those seven hosts are auto-registered, but the jollimemory server is a standard stdio MCP server, so any MCP-capable host can use it. If yours isn’t on the list, wire it up by hand: register a stdio server with command jolli and args ["mcp"], under whatever key that host uses for its stdio servers. That’s the same jolli mcp process the supported hosts spawn - it just assumes the global CLI is on your PATH (npm install -g @jolli.ai/cli; see Getting Started with Jolli Memory).

Turn it on and verify

1. Enable Jolli in your repo (see above) and make sure the repo has at least one commit with a Memory.
2. Restart your AI assistant. This is the step people miss. An assistant reads its MCP config at startup, so a session that was already running will not see the new server until you restart or reload it. In VS Code (or a fork such as Cursor or Windsurf), reload the window; in a JetBrains IDE, restart it; for a CLI assistant, quit and reopen.
3. Ask the assistant to use it:

• “Recall this branch.”
• “What did we decide about the caching layer?”
• “Have we dealt with duplicate webhook deliveries before?”

If it answers with specifics grounded in your commits, you are set.

On Claude Code the tools appear namespaced as mcp__jollimemory__search, mcp__jollimemory__recall, and so on. Other hosts list them under a jollimemory server. You rarely need the exact names; plain language is enough.

Skills vs tools

Alongside the MCP tools, jolli enable installs guided skills. On Claude Code they are slash commands; on other hosts they are Agent Skills. They call the MCP tools for you (and fall back to the CLI when a host has no MCP support), so they are the easy front door:

• /jolli-recall - deep on one branch. Loads that branch’s full Memory and synthesizes an answer. Use it to resume or understand a specific branch.
• /jolli-search - broad and shallow across every branch. Returns relevance-ranked hits. Use it to find where something was decided.

Rule of thumb: search to find the branch, recall to go deep on it.

Troubleshooting

The tools do not show up.

• Restart the assistant. Its MCP config is read at startup (see above).
• Check that your assistant is one of the seven supported hosts listed under Automatic setup. If it was not installed when you ran enable, install it, then run jolli enable again.
• IntelliJ only: confirm Node.js is on your PATH, then reopen the project to retry. The tool window’s “MCP & Skills” row reports the current state.

Search results look stale or empty. The search index is a disposable local cache, separate from your stored Memories. Rebuild it:

jolli mcp --reindex

It reindexes from your stored Memories and prints how many documents it loaded.

For anything else, run jolli doctor and see the troubleshooting section in Reference.

Related

• Getting Started with Jolli Memory - install, enable, and your first Memory.
• Reference - the MCP tool list, config keys, and CLI commands.
• Recall and Search - what recall and search do, and when to reach for each.