Start cognee from the Docker image
Fastest path: prebuilt image, one file
For a local try-out, do NOT clone or build anything. Follow
docs/minimal-docker-compose.md: save this as docker-compose.yml in an
empty directory:
services:
cognee:
image: cognee/cognee:main
ports:
- "8000:8000"
environment:
LLM_API_KEY: ${LLM_API_KEY:?set LLM_API_KEY to your OpenAI API key}
# Single-user try-out: no auth, shared local databases.
ENABLE_BACKEND_ACCESS_CONTROL: "false"
Then:
export LLM_API_KEY="sk-..." # OpenAI key (default LLM + embedding provider)
docker compose up
curl http://localhost:8000/health
Interactive API reference: http://localhost:8000/docs. First requests:
echo "Cognee turns documents into AI memory." > note.txt
# remember = ingest + build the graph in one call (multipart form)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/v1/remember -F "data=@note.txt" -F "datasetName=main_dataset"
# recall = query it (JSON)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/v1/recall -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "What does Cognee do?", "datasets": ["main_dataset"]}'
/api/v1/recall takes the que…