Loom gives your coding agents one shared, durable memory that survives session boundaries, and you can run it either as the hosted Loom Cloud service or on a server you operate yourself.
Loom is a structured long-term memory store for AI coding agents. Your agent (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or Hermes) reads and writes stores through an MCP server, and a set of skills and hooks teach it when to save a decision and when to look one up. You normally interact with Loom by asking your agent, for example:
Use Loom coding memory for this repository. Check existing project decisions
before making a plan.You also get a loom command-line tool for setup, store management and direct reads and writes. See the CLI reference and Concepts for the vocabulary.
Both options use the same CLI, the same agent plugins, the same skills and the same tutorials. They differ in who runs the server.
| Hosted (Loom Cloud) | Private install | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs the server | Loom Cloud, at https://loomcloud.ai | You, on one Linux x86_64 host you control |
| How you get an account | loom setup signs you up with an email code (see Sign up); once your credentials are in ~/.loom/stores.toml, re-running it skips the sign-in | loom setup --base https://<your-host> against your own server (or loom login --base https://<your-host> on a machine with no coding agent installed); anyone who can reach your server and receive an email code can sign up, so you control access with your network and firewall (Admitting users) |
| Where your data lives | On Loom Cloud's hosts | On your host |
| Server install | None | loom setup --mode private on the server host (needs root to apply) |
| CLI, plugins, skills, tutorials | Same | Same |
| Entry point | The loomcloud-ai/loom handbook and <https://loomcloud.ai/install> | Private install (the julius-loom repository README) |
loom setup or loom loginloom setup configures these three); Hermes is configured by hand