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Distillery

Official registry Developer tools

Knowledge base for Claude Code with semantic search, feed intelligence, and teams

Source code Documentation

Install

Add this to your client's MCP configuration (Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json; Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json; VS Code and others use the same "mcpServers" shape).

PYPI package distillery-mcp
Claude Code 
claude mcp add distillery -e 'JINA_API_KEY=<your jina_api_key>' -e 'OPENAI_API_KEY=<your openai_api_key>' -- uvx distillery-mcp==0.7.0
JSON configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) 
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "distillery": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "distillery-mcp==0.7.0"
            ],
            "env": {
                "JINA_API_KEY": "<your jina_api_key>",
                "OPENAI_API_KEY": "<your openai_api_key>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Environment variables

  • JINA_API_KEY secret API key for Jina embedding provider
  • OPENAI_API_KEY secret API key for OpenAI embedding provider (alternative to Jina)
PYPI package distillery-mcp
Claude Code 
claude mcp add distillery -e 'JINA_API_KEY=<your jina_api_key>' -e 'OPENAI_API_KEY=<your openai_api_key>' -- uvx distillery-mcp==0.7.0
JSON configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) 
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "distillery": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [
                "distillery-mcp==0.7.0"
            ],
            "env": {
                "JINA_API_KEY": "<your jina_api_key>",
                "OPENAI_API_KEY": "<your openai_api_key>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Environment variables

  • JINA_API_KEY secret API key for Jina embedding provider
  • OPENAI_API_KEY secret API key for OpenAI embedding provider (alternative to Jina)

Documentation

From the project's README on GitHub, refreshed weekly. Links open on GitHub.

Contents
  1. Distillery
  2. What is Distillery?
  3. Skills
  4. Quick Start
  5. Development
  6. License

Distillery

Team Knowledge, Distilled

Capture, classify, connect, and surface team knowledge through conversational commands.

Documentation · Skills · Quick Start · Roadmap · Slides

What is Distillery?

Distillery is a team knowledge base accessed through Claude Code skills. It refines raw information from working sessions, meetings, bookmarks, and conversations into concentrated, searchable knowledge — stored as vector embeddings in DuckDB and retrieved through natural language. Runs locally over stdio or as a hosted HTTP service with GitHub OAuth for team access.

Distillery captures the highest-value transformation — from noise to signal — and makes it a tool the whole team can use.

Full documentation: norrietaylor.github.io/distillery

Skills

Distillery provides 15 Claude Code slash commands:

SkillPurposeExample
/distillCapture session knowledge with dedup detection/distill "We decided to use DuckDB for local storage"
/recallSemantic search with provenance/recall distributed caching strategies
/pourMulti-entry synthesis with citations/pour how does our auth system work?
/compassContrast internal knowledge vs. ambient intelligence for a directional assessment/compass our caching strategy
/bookmarkStore URLs with auto-generated summaries/bookmark https://example.com/article #caching
/minutesMeeting notes with append updates/minutes --update standup-2026-03-22
/classifyClassify entries and triage review queue/classify --inbox
/watchManage monitored feed sources/watch add github:duckdb/duckdb
/radarAmbient feed digest with source suggestions/radar --days 7
/tuneAdjust feed relevance thresholds/tune relevance 0.4
/digestTeam activity summary from internal entries/digest --days 7 --project myapp
/gh-syncSync GitHub issues/PRs into the knowledge base/gh-sync owner/repo --issues
/investigateDeep context builder with relationship traversal/investigate distributed caching
/briefingTeam knowledge dashboard with metrics/briefing --days 7
/setupOnboarding wizard for MCP connectivity and config/setup

Quick Start

Step 1: Install the Plugin
claude plugin marketplace add norrietaylor/distillery
claude plugin install distillery

This installs all 15 skills. The plugin does not configure an MCP server automatically — run /setup (below) to add one. The recommended setup runs locally via uvx --from 'distillery-mcp[fastembed]>=0.6.0' distillery-mcp — a private, self-contained knowledge base on your machine, with on-device fastembed embeddings (no API key required). Requires Python 3.11+ and uv (install: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh).

Step 2 (Optional): Use Jina or OpenAI Instead

The default fastembed provider runs offline with no API key. If you'd rather use a hosted embedding service, set DISTILLERY_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER and provide the matching API key:

# Jina (free tier at jina.ai)
export DISTILLERY_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=jina
export JINA_API_KEY=jina_...

# Or OpenAI
export DISTILLERY_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=openai
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

uvx inherits these from your shell environment. See distillery.yaml.example for the full provider configuration block (including Option C for fastembed model selection).

Restart Claude Code and run the onboarding wizard:

/setup
Try the Hosted Demo (Opt-In)

Want to evaluate without installing anything locally? Configure the hosted demo at distillery-mcp.fly.dev instead of a local server:

claude mcp add distillery --scope user --transport http --url https://distillery-mcp.fly.dev/mcp

Demo Server: distillery-mcp.fly.dev is for evaluation only. Do not store sensitive or confidential data.

See the Local Setup Guide for full configuration options, or deploy your own instance for team use.

Development

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
# or
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest                              # run tests
mypy --strict src/distillery/       # type check
ruff check src/ tests/              # lint

See Contributing for the full guide.

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE for details.

Frequently asked questions

What is Distillery?

Knowledge base for Claude Code with semantic search, feed intelligence, and teams

How do I install Distillery?

It runs on your machine. In Claude Code: claude mcp add distillery -e 'JINA_API_KEY=<your jina_api_key>' -e 'OPENAI_API_KEY=<your openai_api_key>' -- uvx distillery-mcp==0.7.0. For other clients, paste the JSON configuration from this page into their MCP settings.

Does Distillery need an API key?

Yes. It expects JINA_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, which you set in its configuration.

Is Distillery open source?

Its code is public on GitHub, but the repository does not declare a standard license.

Who maintains Distillery?

It is published by norrietaylor. AI.tn lists it but does not maintain or endorse it.

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