A detailed, side-by-side comparison of cross-app AI memory: capture, distillation, data ownership, and integration surface.
The Capture Difference
Mem0, Zep, and Letta are memory SDKs: a developer writes code to feed messages in and query memory out. The memory lives inside one app, and you only get it if someone built it for you.
BaseLayer is different. The Desktop app silently pulls conversations from IDEs and CLIs like Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, and Gemini CLI. The Chrome extension auto-captures from the AI web apps you already use: chatgpt.com, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, and more. The MCP server pipes it all into a user-owned knowledge graph. No code to write. No SDK to install. No app to rebuild.
Feature matrix
Compare in detail
A passive-capture memory layer for the human using AI tools, not the developer building them. The Desktop app, Chrome extension, and MCP server watch every conversation you’re already having, and the Dream Engine distills them into a user-owned knowledge graph. Use it if your work spans multiple AI tools and you want memory to travel with you.
An open-source memory layer aimed at developers building AI agents. Python and JS SDKs. You call mem0.add() and mem0.search() from your agent code. A good pick if you’re shipping an agent product and want memory inside it. BaseLayer is different: we capture the conversations you’re already having across every AI tool, and the memory is yours, not your app’s.
Temporal knowledge graph for AI assistants. Open-source. Builds a time-aware graph of what your agent knows, indexed for fast retrieval. Best when you’re building an agent that needs to reason about change over time. BaseLayer shares the temporal-graph DNA but captures from the tools you already use instead of requiring you to route traffic through a new SDK.
Self-editing memory for LLM applications. Open-source. The LLM manages its own memory blocks via function calls. Useful for building conversational agents that maintain long-running state inside one app. BaseLayer is a different product: passive capture and distillation from the AI tools you already use, not runtime memory management for a single LLM app.
The Bottom Line
If your workflow spans Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, Windsurf, or any combination, BaseLayer follows you. Mem0, Zep, and Letta live inside one app at a time.
BaseLayer captures passively. No SDK, no instrumentation, no engineering work. The other three need a developer to wire it up.
The Dream Engine’s multi-stage pipeline distills ~10,000 tokens of raw conversation into ~120 tokens of usable knowledge. Other tools store raw messages or do single-pass extraction.
BaseLayer is user-owned, not developer-owned. Export it, carry it across AI tools, keep it when you switch providers.
Honest note: Mem0, Zep, and Letta have open-source offerings. BaseLayer is closed-source and cloud-hosted today. The trade-off: we run the Dream Engine infrastructure so you don’t have to, and we commit to full data export so your memory isn’t trapped.