Motorhead
Motorhead is a memory and information retrieval server for LLMs, providing APIs to store, retrieve, and summarize chat messages. It solves the problem of handling conversation memory in chat applications, which developers otherwise have to build repeatedly. It is intended for developers building LLM-powered chat applications.
✨ Key features
- Provides GET, POST, DELETE APIs for session memory.
- Automatically summarizes messages when window size is exceeded.
- Supports long-term memory via Redisearch VSS for retrieval.
- Configurable window size, model, and OpenAI API settings.
- Supports Azure OpenAI deployments with additional env vars.
- Docker image available for easy deployment.
🎯 Use cases
- Store and retrieve chat history for LLM conversations.
- Maintain context within a maximum window size.
- Perform semantic search over conversation history.
- Build chat applications with persistent memory.
- Incrementally summarize long conversations.
📦 Installation
🧰 Requirements: Requires Redis (REDIS_URL) and an OpenAI API key (OPENAI_API_KEY) for summarization; can run via Docker or docker-compose.
docker-compose build && docker-compose up
Or use the image directly:
docker pull ghcr.io/getmetal/motorhead:latest
docker run --name motorhead -p 8080:8080 -e PORT=8080 -e REDIS_URL='redis://redis:6379' -d ghcr.io/getmetal/motorhead:latest
🚀 Usage
curl --location 'localhost:8080/sessions/${SESSION_ID}/memory' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
"messages": [{ "role": "Human", "content": "ping" }, { "role": "AI", "content": "pong" }]
}'curl --location 'localhost:8080/sessions/${SESSION_ID}/memory'⚠️ Good to know
This project is deprecated and no longer maintained.
❓ FAQ
What is Motorhead?
Motorhead is a memory and information retrieval server for LLMs, providing APIs to store and retrieve chat messages.
How does Motorhead handle long conversations?
It uses a maximum window size; when exceeded, it summarizes half of the messages incrementally.
What are the required environment variables?
REDIS_URL is required, and OPENAI_API_KEY is needed for summarization. Other variables have defaults.
Is Motorhead still supported?
No, the project is deprecated and support is no longer maintained.
📊 Repository
🤖 Overview, features, install steps and FAQ were generated from the project's README on Sep 4, 2026. Always check the original source before running commands.