Short answer: these two genuinely overlap. Both keep persistent memory and do handoffs across coding agents, so this is a real comparison, not a layer mismatch. The difference is scope and control. agentmemory is focused on memory that follows your agents. Brigade treats memory as one part of a wider operator layer that also keeps your MCP servers and your tools and skills in one reviewed source, puts a review gate in front of every write, and leaves a receipt you can roll back. Pick agentmemory if you want memory, fast. Pick Brigade if you want memory plus config plus tools under one review gate, in plain files.
Where they overlap
Both keep context across sessions and across tools, both work with the common coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex, and both have a notion of handing a task off between agents. If all you want is “my agent should stop forgetting,” either can do that.
Where they differ
| agentmemory | Brigade | |
|---|---|---|
| Persistent memory across agents | yes | yes |
| Handoffs between sessions/agents | yes | yes |
| Manages MCP servers | no | yes |
| Manages tools / skills | no | yes |
| Review gate before a write | no | yes |
| Receipt + rollback per change | no | yes |
| Storage | its own store | plain markdown in your repo |
Brigade’s bet is that memory alone is half the problem. Your agents also share MCP servers and tools, and all three drift out of sync and get written without review. Brigade keeps the three together, shows you the diff before it writes, and records a receipt so you can see and undo what changed. The cost of that is that Brigade asks you to review more. If you want zero-friction memory and nothing else, that review step is overhead you may not want.
When agentmemory fits better
- You want persistent memory for your agents and not much else.
- You prefer a memory store that just works without a review step.
When Brigade fits better
- You want one reviewed source for memory, MCP servers, and tools, not three separate setups.
- You want a review gate and a receipt for every change, so nothing is written silently.
- You want your memory as plain files in git, readable without the tool.
Questions
Can Brigade do handoffs like agentmemory? Yes. Writer agents leave handoff notes in their own inbox, Brigade lints and guards each one, and the safe notes file into one shared memory. See handoff promotion.
Is Brigade heavier to run? It asks you to review writes, which is the point. You can let safe, targeted notes file themselves and only step in for the ambiguous ones.
Just want to share MCP servers, not memory? See sharing MCP servers across Claude Code and Codex.
Quickstart and GitHub.