--- name: cognee-cli description: Use when the user wants to drive cognee from the terminal with cognee-cli — remember/recall/forget/improve memory commands, managing datasets and config, or database migrations. ---

# Use the cognee CLI

`cognee-cli` ships with the package (entry point in `cognee/cli/_cognee.py`; each command lives in `cognee/cli/commands/`). Every command has `--help` with examples — prefer that over guessing flags. Needs `LLM_API_KEY` configured, same as the SDK.

## Core flow

The memory commands are the primary surface as of cognee 1.x:

```bash cognee-cli remember "Your text here" # also accepts file paths / URLs cognee-cli remember ./docs --dataset-name my_project cognee-cli recall "Your question" # query the graph cognee-cli recall "keyword" --query-type CHUNKS cognee-cli forget --all # wipe local state ```

`remember` is ingest + graph build in one step (`add` + `cognify` under the hood); `--background`/`-b` runs the cognify stage in the background, and `--dry-run` estimates LLM tokens/cost without ingesting. `recall` takes `--datasets`/`-d`, `--top-k`/`-k` (default 10), and `--session-id`/`-s`.

`forget` targets `--dataset`, `--dataset-id`, `--data-id` (needs a dataset), or `--everything`/`--all` — one unified command covering what `delete`, `prune`, and `empty_dataset` used to do separately.

> **`forget --all` does not ask for confirmation.** It deletes every dataset > immediately, even on a non-interactive stdin. The legacy `delete --all` > prompts `Delete ALL data from cognee? [y/N]` first, so switching to `forget` > silently drops that safety net — script it with care.

Search types match exactly 7 of the SDK's `SearchType` enum (`cognee/modules/search/types/SearchType.py`), those 7 being chosen in (`cognee/cli/config.py:SEARCH_TYPE_CHOICES`): GRAPH_COMPLETION, RAG_COMPLETION, CHUNKS, SUMMARIES, CODE, CYPHER, GRAPH_REPORT Others must be reached from the SDK, not CLI; e.g. call cognee.recall with `query_type=SearchType.TEMPORAL`

Note the CLI defaults `--query-type` to `GRAPH_COMPLETION`, whereas the SDK's `cognee.recall()` auto-routes when `query_type` is omitted.

## Session memory and enrichment

Session entries are currently written from the SDK — `cognee.remember(..., session_id="chat_1")` — not the CLI (`cognee-cli remember` has no session flag). The CLI side of session memory is reading and bridging:

```bash cognee-cli recall "question" -s chat_1 # session cache first: without -d/-t # this searches the session directly cognee-cli sessions get # retrieve session Q&A history cognee-cli improve -d my_project -s chat_1 # bridge session content into the graph cognee-cli improve -d my_project # enrich/index the graph (no session) cognee-cli feedback ... # attach feedback to results ```

`improve` also takes `--node-name`, `--feedback-alpha` (default 0.1), and `--background`/`-b`. `remember`/`improve` build their graphs through `cognify()`, so cognify-level settings (e.g. `CONTRADICTION_DETECTION=true`) apply to them too.

## Legacy / lower-level commands

`add`, `cognify`, `search`, `memify`, and `delete` still ship and are what the memory commands call underneath. Use them only to drive a single stage in isolation; prefer `remember`/`recall`/`forget`/`improve` otherwise.

```bash cognee-cli add "text" && cognee-cli cognify # what `remember` does in one step cognee-cli search "question" # `recall` minus routing/scope/session sources cognee-cli memify -d my_project # custom extraction/enrichment tasks cognee-cli delete --all # superseded by `forget --all` ```

## Management

```bash cognee-cli datasets list # dataset operations cognee-cli config get [key] [--show-secrets] # view one/all settings (API keys masked by default) cognee-cli config set <key> <value> # set + persist to ./.env in the cwd cognee-cli config unset <key> # reset a key to its default (also persisted) cognee-cli -ui # launch API server + UI (see cognee-server skill) cognee-cli serve --url http://localhost:8000 # connect CLI/SDK to a running instance ```

## Relational DB migrations (Alembic)

```bash cognee-cli upgrade # apply migrations cognee-cli downgrade cognee-cli history cognee-cli current ```

Typically needed after version upgrades when the server refuses to start on an old schema.

## Gotchas

- The CLI initializes cognee lazily; the first command in a fresh environment is slow (DB + model setup), later ones are fast. - `remember` (and `add`) without `--dataset-name` targets the default dataset `main_dataset`; `recall`/`search` operate across your accessible datasets unless a dataset is given. - `forget` refuses to run bare — pass `--dataset`, `--dataset-id`, `--data-id` (with a dataset), or `--everything`/`--all`. - Session commands (`recall -s`, `sessions get`, `improve -s`) require `CACHING=true` (the default) — with it off, session reads return nothing and SDK session writes raise. To cut read latency and token cost while keeping session memory, `cognee-cli config set AUTO_FEEDBACK false` — by default cognee makes one structured-output LLM call per answered query to self-tune its memory. - `memify` requires one of the arguments -d/--dataset-name --dataset-id - `config set`/`config unset` write to the `.env` file in whatever directory you run the command from (creating it if missing). `config reset` (reset *all* keys) is still not implemented. - **Which `.env` actually wins is not always the cwd one.** At import, cognee calls `dotenv.load_dotenv(override=True)`, which resolves relative to the *cognee package location*, not your working directory. In a source/editable checkout (`uv pip install -e .`) a `.env` at the repo root therefore shadows the `.env` in the directory you ran from — and because `override=True`, it also beats variables you `export`ed. Symptom: `config set` appears to do nothing, or the CLI connects to a backend you thought you had overridden. To test against different settings, move the repo `.env` aside, or set values programmatically after import (`cognee.config.set_*`). (Under `python -c` the cwd `.env` does win, because dotenv falls back to the cwd when `__main__` has no `__file__` — which is why the same command can behave differently as a script vs. `-c`.)