# beacon.sh: Agent Memory That Survives Switching Coding Tools > Source: > Published: 2026-11-03 19:08:50+00:00 If you use more than one AI coding tool — and at this point, most developers do — you know the tax. Claude Code hits its context limit. You open Codex. You spend the next ten minutes re-explaining your project structure, your naming conventions, and the caching bug you fixed last Tuesday. The agent does not remember. It never did. [Beacon](https://beacon.sh/), an MIT-licensed, open source memory layer from [Asymptote Labs](https://github.com/Asymptote-Labs/agent-beacon), launched on October 20 with a $5.5M seed round and a direct answer to that problem. It captures sessions from 29+ coding harnesses — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode, Cline, GitHub Copilot — normalizes them into a local JSONL store, and makes the useful parts available to your next agent, whatever tool that turns out to be. ## How It Works Beacon installs a lightweight capture hook alongside each supported harness. The hook records prompts, tool calls, file edits, approvals, and token usage in real time using OpenTelemetry-based normalization — same format regardless of which tool generated the session. That data lands in a local JSONL file you own. The important part: Beacon does not automatically inject anything back into your agents. This is a deliberate design choice and the right one. You browse captured sessions with `beacon traces`, optionally run a Jev or SubQ evaluator to score candidates, then write and approve each lesson manually. Once approved, lessons are served to any MCP-compatible agent via `beacon mcp connect`, or packaged as Agent Skills. Nothing reaches your agents until you say it does. That makes Beacon slower than fully automated memory tools — and more reliable for professional codebases. ## Beacon vs. claude-mem: Pick the Right Tool ByteIota covered [claude-mem](https://byteiota.com/claude-mem-give-your-ai-agent-persistent-memory/) two days ago — the 108K-star Apache 2.0 memory plugin that hooks into Claude Code and auto-compresses sessions for semantic retrieval. If your entire workflow lives inside Claude Code, claude-mem is simpler and probably sufficient. It requires no manual lesson approval and works out of the box. Beacon is for a different situation: you use multiple agents interchangeably. Insights from your Cursor sessions should improve your Claude Code sessions, and vice versa. No single-harness memory tool can do that. If you are context-switching between two or three coding agents on a shared repository — which is increasingly common — Beacon is the only free option that bridges them. ## Getting Started Install on macOS: ``` brew update && brew trust asymptote-labs/tap && brew tap asymptote-labs/tap && brew install beacon ``` Linux gets an automated installer with SHA256 verification. Windows gets an x64 MSI with silent install support. After install, run `beacon mcp connect` to register the MCP server with your agents. Point any MCP-compatible agent to Beacon’s endpoint and it will retrieve approved lessons at the start of each session. **One warning before you start:** the default setup selects Cloud storage and backfills the last 30 days of captured sessions. If you are on an NDA-protected repository or have any concern about session data leaving your machine, choose Local storage and pass `--no-backfill` during setup. The option is there; it is just not the default. ## The $5.5M Signal The seed round was led by Tower Research Ventures, with Lytical Ventures, 1984 Ventures, and South Park Commons participating. Tower’s own security team is [running Beacon in production](https://thenextweb.com/news/asymptote-labs-5-5m-seed-ai-agent-security) — that is a more meaningful endorsement than a press release. The GitHub repo hit 460% star growth in September and Beacon took number one Product of the Day on Product Hunt at launch. CEO Justin D’Souza framed the broader bet: “AI agents are becoming a new operating layer inside every company, but infrastructure to understand and control them hasn’t caught up.” The MIT license keeps the base layer free. A Pro tier at $20 per month adds unlimited findings for teams that need it. ## Who Should Adopt Now If you actively switch between two or more coding agents on the same repositories, Beacon solves a real and present problem. Install it, run a few sessions, use `beacon traces` to find one or two high-signal corrections worth preserving, write the lessons, and connect via MCP. The setup takes under ten minutes. If you work exclusively in Claude Code and have no plans to change, [the alternatives review at Era of Minds](https://eraofminds.com/blog/beacon-memory-coding-agents/) suggests claude-mem is still the stronger pick for single-harness workflows. Beacon would add overhead without benefit. Agent memory is becoming infrastructure. The harness-agnostic layer is the harder and more valuable piece to build — and it is the one that was missing until now.