kept-vault

Kept

Kept saves your AI conversations as local Markdown files, then gives you a desktop app to search, browse, connect, and reuse them.

It works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Kimi. Your archive lives on your machine under ~/.kept/, with an Obsidian-compatible vault plus local indexes for full-text search, topics, projects, and graph views.

Quick Install | Download | Setup | Build from source | MCP server

Why Kept

AI chats often become working memory: debugging trails, research notes, product decisions, prompts, snippets, and half-finished ideas. Most of that history stays inside vendor UIs.

Kept turns it into files you own.

• Plain Markdown, grouped by provider.
• Fast local search with SQLite FTS5.
• Graph and topic views for finding connections across old conversations.
• Optional chat over your own archive using the model provider you configure.
• An MCP server so coding agents can read, search, and manage the vault.

How It Works

Chromium browser extension
  -> reads conversations from provider API endpoints using your signed-in session
  -> normalizes messages and supported image assets
  -> sends them to the Kept desktop app on http://localhost:18241

Kept desktop app
  -> writes Markdown files to ~/.kept/vault/
  -> indexes content in SQLite
  -> builds a local knowledge graph in CozoDB
  -> exposes search, graph, project, export, and agent tools

MCP server
  -> lets Claude Code, OpenClaw, and other MCP clients work with the vault

Kept does not scrape rendered chat pages. The extension syncs conversation data from provider API responses and hands the normalized payload to the local app.

Supported Providers

Provider	Sync	Notes
ChatGPT	Yes	Full conversations, streaming history, branch-aware saves
Claude	Yes	Full conversations and streaming history
Gemini	Yes	Best effort; Google's API format changes often
Grok	Yes	Includes supported image assets
Kimi	Yes	Uses the Kimi auth helper included in the extension

Provider APIs are private and can change without notice. Kept keeps the archive as plain files so your saved conversations stay readable even if an adapter needs an update.

Quick Install

Windows PowerShell:

irm https://kept.work/install.ps1 | iex

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://kept.work/install.sh | bash

The installer downloads the latest GitHub Release, installs the desktop app, and extracts the Chromium extension to a local folder. Browsers still require you to load the extension manually in Developer Mode.

The same scripts can be run directly from GitHub:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/egroup-labs/kept.work/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Download

Desktop builds are published on GitHub Releases.

Current release targets:

• macOS Apple Silicon: .dmg
• Windows x64: NSIS .exe installer
• Linux x64: .deb and .AppImage

The release also includes the Chromium extension package. Until the Web Store listing is live, install the extension in developer mode.

Setup

1. Install The Desktop App

Use the Quick Install command above, or download the build for your OS from Releases, install it, and launch Kept.

On first launch, Kept creates:

~/.kept/
  vault/
  index.db
  kg.db/
  config.toml
  token

The app also starts a local server on http://localhost:18241. The browser extension uses this local server to send conversations into the vault.

2. Load The Browser Extension

Kept supports Chromium-based browsers: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Arc, Opera, and Chromium.

1. Extract the extension from the release, or use extension/ from this repo.
2. Open your browser's extensions page, for example chrome://extensions.
3. Enable Developer Mode.
4. Click Load unpacked.
5. Select the extension/ directory.

3. Connect The Extension

With the Kept app running, open this page in the same browser:

http://localhost:18241/connect

That page gives the extension its per-install token. After that, use the extension popup or Kept onboarding flow to sync your providers.

Vault Layout

Kept writes conversations as Markdown with YAML frontmatter:

~/.kept/vault/
  chatgpt/
    2026-05-02_optimizing-cuda-kernel.md
  claude/
    2026-05-02_kept-readme-draft.md
  gemini/
  grok/
  kimi/