guides/installation

Installation Guide

Memex installs with keyword search enabled by default (Whoosh). Semantic search (ChromaDB + sentence-transformers) is optional via the search extra.

Install (Recommended)

# With uv (recommended)
uv tool install memex-kb

# With pip
pip install memex-kb

# Verify installation
mx --version

This includes:

  • Keyword search (Whoosh)
  • KB health checks and graph tooling
  • Static site publishing (mx publish)

Semantic Search (Optional)

If you want semantic search, install the search extra (larger footprint; may download models on first use):

uv tool install 'memex-kb[search]'
# or
pip install 'memex-kb[search]'

From Source

For development or customization:

git clone https://github.com/chriskd/memex-kb.git
cd memex

# Runtime dependencies
uv sync

# Dev dependencies
uv sync --dev

GPU Support (Optional)

If you have an NVIDIA GPU and want CUDA acceleration:

uv sync --index pytorch-gpu=https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu124

Platform Notes

  • ARM64 (Apple Silicon): ChromaDB capped at <1.0.0 for onnxruntime compatibility
  • CPU-only default: PyTorch configured for CPU to minimize install size
  • Python requirement: 3.11 or higher

Next Steps

After installation:

  1. Quick Start Guide - Create your first KB
  2. CLI Reference - Full command documentation
  3. AI Agent Integration - Configure AI assistants