Windsurf Persistent Memory — Never Explain Your Stack Again

Why Windsurf forgets — and why that costs you

Windsurf operates within a context window. When a session ends — tab closes, computer restarts, you switch projects — everything is gone. The next session starts cold. No memory of:

• ✗Your architectural decisions and why you made them
• ✗The bug you spent three hours debugging last Tuesday
• ✗Your team's conventions around error handling and logging
• ✗Which third-party APIs have known quirks in your stack
• ✗What the codebase looked like before the last big refactor

Every session is a fresh start. You spend the first few minutes re-explaining context instead of writing code.

The fix: cachly MCP server

cachly connects to Windsurf via MCP (Model Context Protocol). Once connected, Windsurf's AI has access to 89 memory tools that give it permanent, cross-session recall — automatically.

Setup: one command, 30 seconds

npx @cachly-dev/mcp-server@latest setup

The wizard auto-detects Windsurf and writes the correct MCP config to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json. One browser click to sign in. No API keys to manage:

// ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json (auto-written by cachly setup)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cachly": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cachly-dev/mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "CACHLY_JWT": "your-token-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

If you also use Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, the setup wizard detects those too and configures them all in the same pass. Same Brain, all editors.

brain_from_git: context before session one

After setup, cachly automatically runs brain_from_git — it reads your entire git history and loads the lessons into your Brain:

# What brain_from_git extracts from your git log:
✓ Fix: JWT expiry check before signature validation (commit a3f91c2)
✓ Revert: Redis pub/sub removed — race condition at scale (commit 8b2e441)
✓ Decision: tRPC over REST — type safety across monorepo (commit f9c1203)
✓ Warning: Stripe webhook order not guaranteed — always idempotent

Windsurf arrives at your first session already knowing years of your team's decisions — without you writing a single documentation line.

What a session looks like with cachly

Open Windsurf. On the first tool call, smart_recall fires automatically:

> Good morning. Here's what I remember:
>
> Last session: payments refactor — stripe-webhook.ts
> Team learned: always set idempotency_key for Stripe charges
>   → commit a3f91c2, 2025-11-14
>
> brain_predict: ⚠️ Moderate deploy risk
> The k8s namespace change in PR #441 matches a past
> race condition pattern (incident 2024-08-12).

No prompting. No manual context. Windsurf just knows.

cachly works across all your editors

One Brain, shared across every tool in your workflow:

Run the setup once — cachly configures all detected editors automatically. Switch between editors without losing any context.