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embgrep

by QuartzUnit

embgrep

한국어 문서 · llms.txt

Local semantic search — embedding-powered grep for files, zero external services.

PyPI Python License: MIT

Search your codebase and documentation by meaning, not just keywords. embgrep indexes files into local embeddings and lets you run semantic queries — no API keys, no cloud services, no vector database servers.

Features

  • Local embeddings — Uses fastembed (ONNX Runtime), no API keys needed

  • SQLite storage — Single-file index, no external vector DB

  • Incremental indexing — Only re-indexes changed files (SHA-256 hash comparison)

  • Smart chunking — Function-level splitting for code, heading-level for docs

  • MCP native — 4-tool FastMCP server for LLM agent integration

  • 15+ file types.py, .js, .ts, .java, .go, .rs, .md, .txt, .yaml, .json, .toml, and more

Related MCP server: Personal Semantic Search MCP

Install

pip install embgrep              # core (fastembed + numpy)
pip install embgrep[cli]         # + click/rich CLI
pip install embgrep[mcp]         # + FastMCP server
pip install embgrep[all]         # everything

Quick Start

Python API

from embgrep import EmbGrep

eg = EmbGrep()

# Index a directory
eg.index("./my-project", patterns=["*.py", "*.md"])

# Semantic search
results = eg.search("database connection pooling", top_k=5)
for r in results:
    print(f"{r.file_path}:{r.line_start}-{r.line_end} (score: {r.score:.4f})")
    print(f"  {r.chunk_text[:80]}...")

# Incremental update (only changed files)
eg.update()

# Index statistics
status = eg.status()
print(f"{status.total_files} files, {status.total_chunks} chunks, {status.index_size_mb} MB")

eg.close()

CLI

# Index a project
embgrep index ./my-project --patterns "*.py,*.md"

# Search
embgrep search "error handling patterns"

# Filter by file type
embgrep search "async database query" --path-filter "%.py"

# Check status
embgrep status

# Update changed files
embgrep update

Convenience functions

import embgrep

embgrep.index("./src")
results = embgrep.search("authentication middleware")
status = embgrep.status()
embgrep.update()

MCP Server

Add to your Claude Desktop / MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "embgrep": {
      "command": "embgrep-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or with uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "embgrep": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "embgrep[mcp]", "embgrep-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

MCP Tools

Tool

Description

index_directory

Index files in a directory for semantic search

semantic_search

Search indexed files using natural language

index_status

Get current index statistics

update_index

Incremental update — re-index changed files only

How It Works

flowchart TD
    A["📁 Files"] --> B["Smart Chunking\ncode: function-level\ndocs: heading-level"]
    B --> C["fastembed\nlocal embeddings"]
    C --> D["SQLite\nvector index"]
    D --> E["🔍 Query"]
    E --> F["Cosine Similarity\nranked results"]
    F --> G["✅ Matches\nwith context"]
  1. Chunking — Files are split into semantically meaningful chunks:

    • Code files (.py, .js, .ts, etc.): split by function/class boundaries

    • Documents (.md, .txt): split by headings or paragraph breaks

    • Config files: fixed-size chunking

  2. Embedding — Each chunk is converted to a 384-dimensional vector using BGE-small-en-v1.5 via ONNX Runtime (no PyTorch needed)

  3. Storage — Embeddings are stored as BLOBs in a local SQLite database

  4. Search — Query text is embedded and compared against all chunks using cosine similarity

Configuration

Parameter

Default

Description

db_path

~/.local/share/embgrep/embgrep.db

SQLite database location

model

BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5

fastembed model name

max_chunk_size

1000 chars

Maximum chunk size for fixed-size splitting

top_k

5

Number of search results

QuartzUnit Ecosystem

Package

Description

markgrab

HTML/YouTube/PDF/DOCX to LLM-ready markdown

snapgrab

URL to screenshot + metadata

docpick

OCR + LLM document structure extraction

browsegrab

Local LLM browser agent

feedkit

RSS feed collection + MCP

embgrep

Local semantic search for files

Used in

  • newswatch — RSS news monitoring pipeline (feedkit → markgrab → embgrep → diffgrab)

License

MIT


Part of the QuartzUnit ecosystem — composable Python libraries for data collection, extraction, search, and AI agent safety.

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