vestige/docs/CONFIGURATION.md

Configuration Reference

Environment variables, CLI commands, and setup options

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First-Run Network Requirement

Vestige downloads the Nomic Embed Text v1.5 model (~130MB) from Hugging Face on first use. Qwen3 embeddings are opt-in and download their own Hugging Face model when selected.

All subsequent runs are fully offline.

Model Cache Location

The embedding model is cached in platform-specific directories:

Platform	Cache Location
macOS	~/Library/Caches/com.vestige.core/fastembed
Linux	~/.cache/vestige/fastembed
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\vestige\cache\fastembed

Override with environment variable:

export FASTEMBED_CACHE_PATH="/custom/path"

Qwen3 currently uses Hugging Face Hub's Candle loader directly, so use the standard Hugging Face cache environment such as HF_HOME if you need to relocate that larger model cache.

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Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
VESTIGE_DATA_DIR	OS per-user data directory	Storage directory fallback; overridden by --data-dir; database lives at <dir>/vestige.db
VESTIGE_EMBEDDING_MODEL	nomic-v1.5	Embedding backend selector. Use qwen3-0.6b with a build that enables qwen3-embeddings
RUST_LOG	info (via tracing-subscriber)	Log verbosity + per-module filtering
FASTEMBED_CACHE_PATH	./.fastembed_cache	Embedding model cache location
VESTIGE_DASHBOARD_PORT	3927	Dashboard HTTP + WebSocket port
VESTIGE_HTTP_PORT	3928	Optional MCP-over-HTTP port
VESTIGE_HTTP_BIND	127.0.0.1	HTTP bind address
VESTIGE_AUTH_TOKEN	auto-generated	Dashboard + MCP HTTP bearer auth
VESTIGE_DASHBOARD_ENABLED	false	Set true or 1 to enable the web dashboard
VESTIGE_CONSOLIDATION_INTERVAL_HOURS	6	FSRS-6 decay cycle cadence

Storage location precedence: --data-dir <path> wins over VESTIGE_DATA_DIR; if neither is set, Vestige uses your OS's per-user data directory: ~/Library/Application Support/com.vestige.core/ on macOS, ~/.local/share/vestige/core/ on Linux, %APPDATA%\vestige\core\ on Windows. Custom paths are directories, are created if missing, expand a leading ~, and store the database at <dir>/vestige.db.

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Command-Line Options

vestige-mcp --data-dir /custom/path   # Custom storage location
VESTIGE_DATA_DIR=~/.vestige vestige-mcp # Env fallback storage location
VESTIGE_DATA_DIR=./.vestige vestige stats # Point the CLI at the same custom DB
vestige-mcp --help                     # Show all options

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CLI Commands (v1.1+)

Stats and maintenance were moved from MCP to CLI to minimize context window usage:

vestige stats              # Memory statistics
vestige stats --tagging    # Retention distribution
vestige stats --states     # Cognitive state distribution
vestige health             # System health check
vestige consolidate        # Run memory maintenance
vestige restore <file>     # Restore from backup
vestige portable-export <file>         # Exact Vestige-to-Vestige archive
vestige portable-import <file>         # Import exact archive into an empty database
vestige portable-import <file> --merge # Merge exact archive into this database
vestige sync <file>                    # Pull/merge/push through a file backend

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Client Configuration

Codex (One-liner)

codex mcp add vestige -- /usr/local/bin/vestige-mcp

Codex (Manual)

Add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.vestige]
command = "/usr/local/bin/vestige-mcp"

Claude Code (One-liner)

claude mcp add vestige vestige-mcp -s user

Claude Code (Manual)

Add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vestige": {
      "command": "vestige-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop (macOS)

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vestige": {
      "command": "vestige-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop (Windows)

Add to %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vestige": {
      "command": "vestige-mcp"
    }
  }
}

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Custom Data Directory

For per-project or custom storage:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vestige": {
      "command": "vestige-mcp",
      "args": ["--data-dir", "/path/to/custom/dir"]
    }
  }
}

For a shell-level default:

export VESTIGE_DATA_DIR="/path/to/custom/dir"

--data-dir takes precedence over VESTIGE_DATA_DIR, so you can keep a global env default and still isolate one client or project with an explicit CLI argument.

See Storage Modes for more options.

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Updating Vestige

Latest version:

vestige update

Pin to specific version:

vestige update --version v2.1.1

Check your version:

vestige-mcp --version

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Development

# Run tests
cargo test --all-features

# Run with logging
RUST_LOG=debug cargo run --release

# Build optimized binary
cargo build --release --all-features