Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables.

Variable	Default	Description
SDM_DB_PATH	~/.superdupermemory/memory.db	Path to the SQLite database file
SDM_HTTP_PORT	3000	Port for the HTTP server (serve-web)
SDM_EXTRACTOR	anthropic	LLM for fact extraction: anthropic or openai
SDM_EXTRACTOR_MODEL	(provider default)	Override the model used for extraction
SDM_EMBEDDER	local	Embedding backend: local (fastembed) or openai
SDM_EMBEDDER_MODEL	(provider default)	Override the OpenAI embedding model
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	—	Required when SDM_EXTRACTOR=anthropic
OPENAI_API_KEY	—	Required when SDM_EXTRACTOR=openai or SDM_EMBEDDER=openai
SDM_ENCRYPTION_KEY	—	AES-256-GCM key (64 hex chars) for at-rest encryption of fact bodies

Using OpenAI instead of Anthropic

SDM_EXTRACTOR=openai
SDM_EMBEDDER=openai   # optional — local embeddings work well without this
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

At-rest encryption

Generate a key and store it somewhere safe:

openssl rand -hex 32
# → 4a7f3b9c2d1e8a5f...

Set SDM_ENCRYPTION_KEY=4a7f3b9c2d1e8a5f.... All fact bodies will be encrypted in SQLite. Losing this key means losing access to all memories.

Local embeddings

By default, superdupermemory uses fastembed with the all-MiniLM-L6-v2 model running locally. The model downloads automatically on first run (~22 MB). No API key needed.

This is the recommended setup — it keeps all data local and avoids per-token embedding costs.