RootMind

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Quickstart · Install · Claude & other tools · Ollama · How it works · Security · Limitations · For developers

Ask your documents a question. Get the answer with the page it came from.

RootMind indexes the folders you choose on your own computer (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, Markdown and text files). When you ask a question, a language model searches that index and reads the passages it asks for, then answers with sources down to the page, slide or sheet. There is no embedding model and no vector database: indexing is plain full-text search in SQLite, and the model drives the retrieval.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d3cc0249-a550-4de5-ae6b-55c1291a282f

• Cited answers. Every answer names its files and, where it can be resolved, the page, slide or sheet.

• Your files stay on your computer. Indexing and search are local and need no LLM and no API key. Answering a question sends the question and the excerpts the model reads to the provider you configure (Anthropic, OpenAI or xAI). With a local Ollama server as the provider, nothing leaves your computer (see Local models with Ollama).

• It reads, it does not stuff. Instead of pasting whole documents into a chat, the model searches and reads targeted windows, and every step is a visible tool call. The cost is more model round trips than classic RAG; see Why a tool loop instead of embedding RAG.

• Usable from your other tools. The same read-only tools are served over MCP, for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, n8n and other agents.

• Windows and Linux. The desktop app is in English and German; the license is MIT.

Quickstart

1. Install. Windows 10 or 11: download and run RootMind-Setup-x64.exe. Linux: the .deb, .rpm or AppImage. If Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway (the installer is not code-signed yet).

2. Add a folder. Start RootMind and add a folder with your documents under Folders. Indexing starts within about a minute.

3. Ask. In Chat, tick Search only to search without an API key. For answers with sources, save an API key from Anthropic, OpenAI or xAI under Settings, or choose Ollama.

4. Use it in Claude (optional):

   Where	How
   Local: Claude Desktop on this computer	Download rootmind.mcpb and double-click it. Done, nothing to configure.
   Remote: Claude on the web, the Claude app on your phone, n8n in the cloud	Settings → MCP: tick Remote / Public access with ngrok, enter your ngrok Authtoken and domain, Connect, Turn on. Then Use RootMind in Claude on the web and on your phone shows the values for a connector on claude.ai (step by step).

   The remote connector belongs to your Claude account, so it works in Claude Desktop too. If you use it, you don't need the mcpb; with both, Claude shows every tool twice.

Related MCP server: Claude RAG MCP Pipeline

Install

Windows 10 or 11 (x64): run RootMind-Setup-x64.exe and approve the administrator prompt once; no Python is needed. It installs the app and the RootMind service, which keeps your index up to date while the app is closed and starts with Windows.

The installer is not code-signed yet: Windows SmartScreen may show "Windows protected your PC" (choose More info, then Run anyway), and Smart App Control, when it is on, may block it (see the code signing policy).

Install on Linux

x86-64 with glibc 2.35 or later (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 38, openSUSE Tumbleweed and newer):

Start RootMind from your app menu or with rootmind-desktop. On the first start it sets up its background service for your account, without root. To keep it running while nobody is logged in (for example for n8n on the same computer), run loginctl enable-linger "$USER" once. For OCR with the AppImage, install tesseract-ocr and tesseract-ocr-deu yourself.

Update and uninstall

• Update: install the new version over the old one (Windows: run the new installer; Linux: install the new package or replace the AppImage). Folders, settings, index, tokens and chats are kept.

• Uninstall on Windows: Windows Settings → Apps. Your data stays in %ProgramData%\RootMind unless you tick Delete the application data.

• Uninstall on Linux: first /usr/lib/RootMind/backend/rootmind-backend service uninstall, then sudo apt remove root-mind (or sudo dnf remove root-mind).

Verify downloads

Every release ships SHA256SUMS.txt and a build provenance attestation for each file:

(Get-FileHash .\RootMind-Setup-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash.ToLower()

sha256sum --check --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS.txt
gh attestation verify RootMind-Setup-x64.exe --repo cgaeking/rootmind

Silent and managed installs (winget, Intune), the service in detail, WSL and upgrading from 1.x: docs/INSTALL.md.

Use RootMind in Claude and other tools

Other programs get RootMind's read-only search tools over MCP and use their own model, so RootMind needs no API key for them. Settings → MCP has everything: Local for programs on this computer, Remote / Public access with ngrok for everything else.

Use RootMind in Claude Desktop

Download rootmind.mcpb and double-click it; Claude Desktop installs it once you confirm. There is nothing to configure: it finds RootMind on this computer by itself. It needs Serve MCP over HTTP on (the default).

Claude Code

Copy MCP token under Settings → MCP → Local, then:

claude mcp add --transport http rootmind http://127.0.0.1:3000/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <MCP token>"

Use the port Settings shows if it is not 3000. Reach MCP from Claude, n8n and other clients in the app shows the command with the token filled in.

Reach MCP from n8n

Use the MCP Client Tool node:

For n8n in the cloud or on another machine, use the public address from Remote instead.

Remote: Claude on the web and on your phone

1. Create a free account at ngrok.com. Copy your ngrok Authtoken (dashboard: Getting Started › Your Authtoken) and create your free static domain under Domains.

2. In RootMind, Settings → MCP: tick Remote / Public access with ngrok, enter the Authtoken and the domain, Connect, then Turn on. The status changes to Connected.

3. On claude.ai: Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector:

   Field	Value
   Name	RootMind
   URL	https://<your-domain>/mcp
   Authentication	No sign in
   Request header	Authorization = Bearer <MCP token>

   Use RootMind in Claude on the web and on your phone in the app shows these values with Copy buttons.

The connector is then in the Claude app on your phone and in Claude Desktop too. Good to know:

• Anyone with the MCP token can read every indexed document through the public address. Unticking Remote closes it at once.

• Your computer must be on and awake.

• What Claude reads through RootMind goes to Anthropic.

Other cloud assistants work the same way with the public address and the MCP token. Your own tunnel (ngrok agent, Tailscale Funnel), the mcpb in detail and the MCP Registry entry: docs/MCP.md.

Local models with Ollama

Choose Ollama under Settings → LLM (or provider: ollama under llm in config.yaml) to run the question loop against a model on your own machine. There is no API key; the base URL defaults to http://localhost:11434 and can point at another computer on your network.

llm:
  provider: ollama
  model: qwen3:8b          # any model you pulled that supports tools
  base_url: http://localhost:11434

• What stays local: with Ollama on this computer, the question, the excerpts the model reads and the answer never leave it. With a base URL on another computer, they go to that computer, unencrypted over plain http://.

• Tool support is required. Pick a model Ollama lists as supporting tools (ollama show <model>). A model without it fails with a clear message.

• Context length: the loop reads document windows, and Ollama's default context is small. Raise it (for example OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH=16384 for the server, or a Modelfile with PARAMETER num_ctx 16384), or long documents are cut off without an error.

• Search first: Ollama models are not forced to call a tool on the first turn, since not every model supports that. If the first answer never looked at the documents, RootMind asks once more with an explicit instruction.

• How well a local model follows the tool loop depends on the model; the measurements are in backend/evals.

How it works

1. Indexing uses no LLM. RootMind extracts the text of your files into a local SQLite full-text index (with page, slide and sheet markers) and skips unchanged files.

2. The model chooses what to read. For a question, the model gets five read-only tools (search, fuzzy search, list, read, statistics). It searches, reads the text around a hit, searches again if needed, then answers.

3. Answers carry sources: the files with page, slide or sheet, and every tool call is visible.

4. MCP clients bring their own model and use the same tools.

The details, with a diagram and the limits of the loop: docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.

Why a tool loop instead of embedding RAG

A typical RAG pipeline splits documents into chunks, embeds them, retrieves the top matches by vector similarity and puts those chunks into the prompt. The model sees only what that retrieval step picked.

RootMind keeps each document's full text in a full-text index and lets the model drive retrieval. It can search, look at the snippets, read the text around a hit, and search again with different terms when the first query misses. This is sometimes called RLM-style or agentic retrieval. The engine module is named rlm_engine after that idea; in this code base it is a bounded tool-use loop, not a model that calls itself recursively.

Trigram fuzzy search covers typos, not synonyms. Eval case c09 (the synonym trap) keeps that weakness visible.

Security model in short

• RootMind is built for one person on their own computer. The REST API binds to 127.0.0.1, refuses connections from other machines, rejects foreign Host headers and allows cross-origin requests only from the desktop app.

• The RootMind service requires a bearer token on its REST API. rootmind api from source runs without a token unless you ask for one; without a token, any local process can call it.

• The service runs as LocalSystem but reads only what the installing account can read without administrator rights. Installing and repairing it needs one administrator approval. On Linux it runs as systemd user services of your own account, without root; file modes keep its data and tokens private to the account.

• The MCP HTTP server is on by default; it requires a bearer token and binds to 127.0.0.1. Remote access (ngrok) is off by default; turned on, anyone with the MCP token can read every indexed document through the public address.

• Indexing stays on your machine. Answering a question sends the question, search snippets and document excerpts to the LLM provider you configured.

• Indexed documents are untrusted input. All tools are read-only, document text is marked as data, and a question's tool use is capped, but prompt injection is not a solved problem.

The full threat model is in SECURITY.md.

Limitations

• The desktop app and the RootMind service run on Windows and on Linux (x86-64); there is no macOS build. The backend is cross-platform Python; CI runs its tests on Ubuntu and Windows.

• The release binaries are not code-signed yet (see Install). RootMind is not in the winget repository yet; the first submission is under way.

• Text recognition (OCR) for scanned PDFs and images is off by default and turned on per folder. It recognizes one page at a time in the background, so a large archive of scans takes hours before all of it is searchable.

• Legacy .doc and .xls files go to the DOCX and XLSX parsers and usually fail to parse.

• No streaming: the desktop app waits for the complete answer.

• Full-text search has no synonym or cross-language matching (see the trade-off table above).

• On Windows, installing needs an administrator account, and the service serves one account per computer: the one that installed RootMind. On Linux every account that starts RootMind gets services of its own.

• The Windows service cannot index network drives or shares.

• On Linux the service runs only while you are logged in, unless lingering is on (loginctl enable-linger).

• Only one process per database should index. The MCP servers only serve by default; set RLM_DISABLE_SCHEDULER=1 on any additional REST API that shares the database.

• The MCP stdio server reads the list of folders at startup; restart it after changing folders.

• An incremental sync hashes every file in every configured folder, which is slow for very large folders.

For developers

Status: this is a personal project. It is not commercially maintained and comes with no support commitment. Issues and pull requests are welcome and get a best-effort response.

• docs/DEVELOPMENT.md: how it works in detail, the command line, installing for developers and servers, running from source, building the installer, tracing, tests and the repository layout.

• docs/SERVER.md: RootMind on a server for several people.

• ARCHITECTURE.md and SECURITY.md: the architecture and the threat model.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup, checks, conventions and the release steps. Please report security issues privately as described in SECURITY.md.

License

MIT, copyright (c) 2026 Christian Gäking.

The packaged backend and the installer bundle third-party dependencies, which keep their own licenses.

Code signing policy

Releases are not code-signed yet; each release ships checksums and build provenance attestations instead (see Verify downloads). CODE_SIGNING.md describes what will be signed, the team roles and the privacy policy.