Docker & Colima Setup for Cognee UI / MCP

The cognee-cli -ui command starts an MCP server inside a Docker container. This requires a running Docker-compatible daemon. Both Docker Desktop and Colima (an open-source, commercially-free alternative) are supported.

Option A: Docker Desktop

Install from https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/ and start the application. No extra configuration is needed.

Option B: Colima (macOS / Linux)

Colima provides a lightweight container runtime without a Docker Desktop licence.

Install

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install colima docker

# Linux (Homebrew)
brew install colima docker

Start Colima

# Basic start
colima start

# Recommended: give the VM a host-reachable network address
colima start --network-address

Important: --network-address does not itself add a host.docker.internal DNS entry — it provisions a shared-network IP that is reachable from both the Colima VM and the host. Colima maps host.docker.internal → host.lima.internal by default (recent versions), so combined with a reachable address host.docker.internal generally resolves; directly resolving it to the --network-address IP is still an open request (abiosoft/colima#560). The cognee MCP entrypoint also includes automatic fallback logic (tries host.docker.internal, then host.lima.internal, then the container's default gateway IP), so the host-API flow works even without this flag.

Verify

docker info   # Should print server information without errors
docker run --rm hello-world

Troubleshooting

"Docker daemon is not responding"

Container cannot reach host API (localhost / 127.0.0.1)

Inside a container, localhost refers to the container itself, not the host machine. The MCP entrypoint automatically rewrites localhost / 127.0.0.1 to a reachable host address using the following fallback order:

1. host.docker.internal (Docker Desktop on macOS / Windows / Linux)
2. host.lima.internal (Colima / Lima)
3. Default gateway IP (plain Linux Docker, typically 172.17.0.1)

If none of these work:

# Use the Docker bridge gateway directly
docker run -e API_URL=http://172.17.0.1:8000 ...

# Or use host networking (Linux only)
docker run --network host ...

Colima: host.docker.internal does not resolve

First, give the VM a host-reachable address (most setups need only this):

colima stop
colima start --network-address

This provisions a VM IP reachable from the host; host.docker.internal then typically resolves via Colima's default host.docker.internal → host.lima.internal mapping. Note that --network-address does not itself write a DNS entry.

If the name still does not resolve (e.g. a missing or custom mapping), add it explicitly via network.dnsHosts in ~/.colima/default/colima.yaml:

network:
  dnsHosts:
    host.docker.internal: host.lima.internal

then colima restart.

Source: docs/docker-colima-setup.md