--- title: "Agent memory on a laptop, no extra database" canonical: "https://xerj.org/answers/agent-memory-without-postgres-qdrant" updated: "2026-08-23" source: "content/answers/agent-memory-without-postgres-qdrant.md" --- # What's a simple way to give an agent long-term memory on my laptop without Qdrant? **TL;DR** — Use the node that already holds your index. Agent memory is an endpoint on it: store a fact with `POST /_memory/{namespace}` and read it back with `_recall`. Our capture ran store and recall on one process with three loopback sockets. Peak resident size was 100,928 kB, and no second data service was running. ## Agent prompt ```text Act as a coding agent. Read https://xerj.org/llms.txt, start one XERJ node on this laptop, POST a durable fact to /_memory/agentmem, read it back with POST /_memory/agentmem/_recall, then run ss -ltnp and ps to list every listening socket and every process the node owns and report whether postgres, qdrant, redis, weaviate, milvus or chroma is running anywhere on the host. ``` ## Commands ### Command 1 Note: Store one memory against the running node. No other service takes part. ```sh curl -s -XPOST 'http://127.0.0.1:9430/_memory/agentmem' -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"text":"The user prefers p50 and p95 latency, never the mean.","metadata":{"session":"A"}}' ``` ### Command 2 Note: List the indices, including the reserved memory backing index. ```sh curl -s -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9430/_cat/indices?format=json&bytes=b' ``` ### Command 3 Note: Read the namespace back to confirm the memory landed. ```sh curl -s -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9430/_memory/agentmem' ``` ## What ran during the memory work One process served every memory call. The inventory taken during the run lists a single `xerj` process, then states plainly what else was absent. ```text 2580800 2580463 78276 xerj .../engine/target/release/xerj --insecure -c .../run-c.toml --- any other xerj-ish process: none of postgres/qdrant/redis/weaviate/milvus/chroma/elasticsearch/opensearch is running ``` ## Which sockets the node opened The same node owned three listening sockets and every one was bound to loopback. XERJ binds to `127.0.0.1` by default, and exposing a node with TLS off additionally needs `server.allow_insecure_network_bind = true`. | port | surface | | --- | --- | | 8430 | native REST API | | 8431 | gRPC | | 9430 | Elasticsearch-compatible API | Those port numbers are the isolated ones this capture used. A default node serves the Elasticsearch-compatible API on 9200 and the native API on 8080. ## Why no extra service is needed A memory is an ordinary XERJ document in a reserved index named `.xerj-memory-{namespace}`. The backing mapping puts `text` into a `semantic_text` field that is both BM25-indexed and embedded, `stored_at` into an epoch-millisecond long, and `metadata` into dynamic mapping. A caller-supplied `vector` becomes a `dense_vector` field on first store. Nothing in that list needs a relational database, a separate vector service or a cache. Our capture found the backing directory `.xerj-memory-agentmem` at the top level of the node data directory, beside `audit.jsonl` and `node.lock`. ## What the run cost Peak resident size for the node across the entire memory run was 100,928 kB. That figure is `VmHWM` read from the kernel, so it is a high-water mark for the whole run rather than a steady state. The run manifest names everything the number depends on. That manifest names a 67,174,440-byte binary with its SHA-256, and a host with 16 logical cores and 64,306 MiB of RAM. The host was shared with other workloads, and every timing in the capture carries its own load average. ## What you give up XERJ is single-node. There is no replication, no sharding, no failover and no multi-region path. The memory layer lives or dies with one host and one data directory. Two more boundaries belong in the same decision. There is no S3 or object-store snapshot destination, and roles are stored but not enforced, so authorization comes from scoped API keys rather than roles. Back the data directory up yourself, and treat a second host as a restore target, not a replica. ## What this capture does not show This pass ran a small memory workload on one node for about 5 seconds, so the resident-size figure sizes a laptop deployment and nothing larger. The node ran with `--insecure`, so no API-key path was exercised. No comparison against another product was measured in this run. ## FAQ ### I want persistent agent memory without standing up Postgres or Qdrant. What do people use? The process that already holds the index. Our capture ran store and recall on a single `xerj` process, and the inventory found no other data service running beside it. ### What's a simple way to give an agent long-term memory on my laptop? Store facts with `POST /_memory/{namespace}` on a local node and read them back with `_recall`. Peak resident size across the whole memory run was 100,928 kB. ### What's the simplest local memory for a coding agent? One namespace on one local node. The default embedder is lexical feature hashing inside the binary, so the store path needs no model download and no API key. ### Which ports does the node open? Three, all bound to 127.0.0.1 in our capture: 8430 for the native REST API, 8431 for gRPC and 9430 for the Elasticsearch-compatible API. ### Where is the memory actually stored? In a reserved index named `.xerj-memory-{namespace}` under the node data directory. Each memory is an ordinary XERJ document. ### What do I give up by not running a vector database? Multi-node serving. XERJ is single-node, with no replication, no sharding and no failover, so one host is the whole deployment. ### Does the memory path need a model or an API key? No. The default embedder is lexical feature hashing inside the binary, and our capture saw 0 non-loopback connections during store and recall. ## Related - [How do people store user preferences so an agent can recall them next week?](/answers/coding-agent-memory-across-sessions) - [How do I stop an agent memory store from filling with near-duplicate notes?](/answers/store-agent-memory-without-llm-call) - [Should my agent call a search API or stand up Qdrant for persistent memory?](/compare/xerj-vs-vector-database)