🍓 BerryRAG: Local Vector Database with Playwright MCP Integration

A complete local RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) system that integrates Playwright MCP web scraping with vector database storage for Claude.

✨ Features

• Zero-cost self-hosted vector database

• Playwright MCP integration for automated web scraping

• Multiple embedding providers (sentence-transformers, OpenAI, fallback)

• Smart content processing with quality filters

• Claude-optimized context formatting

• MCP server for direct Claude integration

• Command-line tools for manual operation

Related MCP server: local_lense

🚀 Quick Start

1. Installation

git clone https://github.com/berrydev-ai/berry-rag.git
cd berry-rag

# Install dependencies
npm run install-deps

# Setup directories and instructions
npm run setup

2. Configure Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "playwright": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@playwright/mcp@latest"]
    },
    "berry-rag": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["mcp_servers/vector_db_server.js"],
      "cwd": "/Users/eberry/BerryDev/berry-rag"
    }
  }
}

3. Start Using

# Example workflow:
# 1. Scrape with Playwright MCP through Claude
# 2. Process into vector DB
npm run process-scraped

# 3. Search your knowledge base
npm run search "React hooks"

📁 Project Structure

berry-rag/
├── src/                          # Python source code
│   ├── rag_system.py            # Core vector database system
│   └── playwright_integration.py # Playwright MCP integration
├── mcp_servers/                  # MCP server implementations
│   └── vector_db_server.ts      # TypeScript MCP server
├── storage/                      # Vector database storage
│   ├── documents.db             # SQLite metadata
│   └── vectors/                 # NumPy embedding files
├── scraped_content/             # Playwright saves content here
└── dist/                        # Compiled TypeScript

🔧 Commands

Streamlit Web Interface

Launch the web interface for easy interaction with your RAG system:

# Start the Streamlit web interface
python run_streamlit.py

# Or directly with streamlit
streamlit run streamlit_app.py

The web interface provides:

• 🔍 Search: Interactive document search with similarity controls

• 📄 Context: Generate formatted context for AI assistants

• ➕ Add Document: Upload files or paste content directly

• 📚 List Documents: Browse your document library

• 📊 Statistics: System health and performance metrics

NPM Scripts

Python CLI

# RAG System Operations
python src/rag_system.py search "query"
python src/rag_system.py context "query"  # Claude-formatted
python src/rag_system.py add <url> <title> <file>
python src/rag_system.py list
python src/rag_system.py stats

# Playwright Integration
python src/playwright_integration.py process
python src/playwright_integration.py setup
python src/playwright_integration.py stats

🤖 Usage with Claude

1. Scraping Documentation

"Use Playwright to scrape the React hooks documentation from https://react.dev/reference/react and save it to the scraped_content directory"

2. Processing into Vector Database

"Process all new scraped files and add them to the BerryRAG vector database"

3. Querying Knowledge Base

"Search the BerryRAG database for information about React useState best practices"

"Get context from the vector database about implementing custom hooks"

🔌 MCP Tools Available to Claude

BerryRAG provides two powerful MCP servers for Claude integration:

Vector DB Server Tools

• add_document - Add content directly to vector DB

• search_documents - Search for similar content

• get_context - Get formatted context for queries

• list_documents - List all stored documents

• get_stats - Vector database statistics

• process_scraped_files - Process Playwright scraped content

• save_scraped_content - Save content for later processing

BerryExa Server Tools

• crawl_content - Advanced web content extraction with subpage support

• extract_links - Extract internal links for subpage discovery

• get_content_preview - Quick content preview without full processing

📖 For complete MCP setup and usage guide, see BERRY_MCP.md

🧠 Embedding Providers

The system supports multiple embedding providers with automatic fallback:

1. sentence-transformers (recommended, free, local)

2. OpenAI embeddings (requires API key, set OPENAI_API_KEY)

3. Simple hash-based (fallback, not recommended for production)

⚙️ Configuration

Environment Variables

# Optional: for OpenAI embeddings
export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key_here

Content Quality Filters

The system automatically filters out:

• Content shorter than 100 characters

• Navigation-only content

• Repetitive/duplicate content

• Files larger than 500KB

Chunking Strategy

• Default chunk size: 500 characters

• Overlap: 50 characters

• Smart boundary detection (sentences, paragraphs)

📊 Monitoring

Check System Status

# Vector database statistics
python src/rag_system.py stats

# Processing status
python src/playwright_integration.py stats

# View recent documents
python src/rag_system.py list

Storage Information

• Database: storage/documents.db (SQLite metadata)

• Vectors: storage/vectors/ (NumPy arrays)

• Scraped Content: scraped_content/ (Markdown files)

🔍 Example Workflows

Academic Research

1. Scrape research papers with Playwright

2. Process into vector database

3. Query for specific concepts across all papers

Documentation Management

1. Scrape API documentation from multiple sources

2. Build unified searchable knowledge base

3. Get contextual answers about implementation details

Content Aggregation

1. Scrape blog posts and articles

2. Create topic-based knowledge clusters

3. Find related content across sources

🛠️ Development

Building the MCP Server

npm run build

Running in Development Mode

npm run dev  # TypeScript watch mode

Testing

# Test RAG system
python src/rag_system.py stats

# Test integration
python src/playwright_integration.py setup

# Test MCP server
node mcp_servers/vector_db_server.js

🚨 Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Python dependencies missing:

pip install -r requirements.txt

TypeScript compilation errors:

npm install
npm run build

Embedding model download slow: The first run downloads sentence-transformers model (~90MB). This is normal.

No results from search:

• Check if documents were processed: python src/rag_system.py list

• Verify content quality filters aren't too strict

• Try broader search terms

Logs and Debugging

• Python logs: Check console output

• MCP server logs: Stderr output

• Processing status: scraped_content/.processed_files.json

📝 License

MIT License - feel free to modify and extend for your needs.

🤝 Contributing

This is a personal project for Eric Berry, but feel free to fork and adapt for your own use cases.

Happy scraping and searching! 🕷️🔍✨