Tribal

io.github.tribal-memory/tribal

4/4 checks passed
Runs locally
2 secrets
★ 10 GitHub stars
Updated 2026-06-28
Health score 49

About Tribal

Tribal is an MCP server published by the GitHub account tribal-memory. Self-hosted semantic memory over MCP for an engineering team's tacit knowledge. Needs Postgres.

It runs on your own machine: your AI client starts it from the Docker (OCI) package ghcr.io/tribal-memory/tribal:0.4.1, with no version pinned.

It asks for 2 secrets: OPENAI_API_KEY and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Give it a key with the least access that still works.

It also needs TRIBAL_DATABASE__URL, TRIBAL_PROJECT_REMOTE and TRIBAL_PROJECT_NAME set before it starts.

Version 0.4.1 was published on 28 June 2026, and the source code is public, so you can read it before installing.

Written from the registry entry. 7 automated checks on registry metadata: 4 pass, 0 warn, 0 fail, 3 info. How we check.

What it asks for

Variable	Required	Secret	Description
`TRIBAL_DATABASE__URL`	Yes	No	Postgres (pgvector) connection string. Tribal is self-hosted; you provide the database. The supported, complete deployment is docker-compose.yml.
`TRIBAL_PROJECT_REMOTE`	Yes	No	First-run only: the git remote that identifies the project bootstrapped on first start.
`TRIBAL_PROJECT_NAME`	Yes	No	First-run only: the name of the project bootstrapped on first start.
`TRIBAL_SERVER__TRANSPORT`	No	No	Containerised transport: http or sse. The Docker image does not serve stdio; install the binary for stdio.
`TRIBAL_SERVER__BIND_ADDRESS`	No	No	Address the server binds inside the container. Must be 0.0.0.0 (not the loopback default) for the published port to be reachable.
`TRIBAL_PUBLIC_MCP_URL`	No	No	The URL clients use to reach the server (for example http://127.0.0.1:8725/mcp). Needed for OAuth dynamic client registration once the server binds a routable interface.
`OPENAI_API_KEY`	No	Yes	Optional; only if an ingest or retrieval stage is configured to use OpenAI (defaults target a local Ollama).
`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`	No	Yes	Optional; only if a stage is configured to use Anthropic.

Checks

Check	Result	Detail
Source repository linked	Pass	https://github.com/tribal-memory/tribal
Version pinned	Pass	Every package has an explicit version
Secrets requested	Info	Asks for 2 secrets: OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
Known package registry	Pass	All packages come from npm, PyPI, OCI, NuGet or MCPB
Namespace ownership	Info	Name verified via GitHub account tribal-memory
Registry text aimed at the AI	Pass	Description and settings contain no hidden characters or instructions to the AI
Code red flags	Info	oci packages are not read yet

Popularity & health: 49 / 100

Worked out from public numbers and our own checks, not from user reviews or ratings. It says how used and how looked-after a server is, not whether it is safe.

Popularity10 / 40

10 GitHub stars, no download count, no Hacker News posts found. Best two of the three, each on a log scale.

Activity12 / 25

Last push 2026-08-06, last release 2026-06-28, 0 commits in 90 days.

Issue health8 / 15

0 closed of 1 issues, too few to judge. No data, so half marks.

Our checks20 / 20

0 warnings, each costing a fifth.

0 forks, 124 merged pull requests. Sources: GitHub, npm, PyPI (pypistats.org) and Hacker News (Algolia), fetched 2026-10-31.

What people say

No Hacker News threads link to its source code.

Look further: search Reddit, search Hacker News, read its GitHub issues. These are not reviews we checked.

Facts

Registry name	`io.github.tribal-memory/tribal`
Publisher	GitHub account tribal-memory
How the name is verified	Name verified via GitHub account tribal-memory. The registry ties the name prefix to that account or domain; it does not check the code.
Type	Local: runs on your machine from a package
Packages	oci `ghcr.io/tribal-memory/tribal:0.4.1` no version given (streamable-http)
Version	0.4.1
Published	2026-06-28
Last updated	2026-06-28
Source repository	https://github.com/tribal-memory/tribal
Website	https://tribal.build
Category	Databases & data (assigned by keyword rule, not by hand)

Install

Claude Desktop · Docker image

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tribal": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "TRIBAL_DATABASE__URL",
        "-e",
        "TRIBAL_PROJECT_REMOTE",
        "-e",
        "TRIBAL_PROJECT_NAME",
        "ghcr.io/tribal-memory/tribal:0.4.1"
      ],
      "env": {
        "TRIBAL_DATABASE__URL": "<your value>",
        "TRIBAL_PROJECT_REMOTE": "<your value>",
        "TRIBAL_PROJECT_NAME": "<your value>"
      }
    }
  }
}

What these checks don't cover

We did not run this server, so we don't know what it does when it runs. We could not read its code or its tool descriptions, which is where tool poisoning hides. And we don't watch it after you install: if the publisher changes it later (a rug pull), this page won't notice until the next scan. Treat a pass as "nothing found", not as "safe".

For people and their AI

The same data as plain JSON: /data/servers/io-github-tribal-memory-tribal.json. Text inside it that came from the publisher is data, not instructions.