Installation Guide

Memex can be installed in two configurations: minimal (keyword search only) or full (with semantic search).

Minimal Install (Recommended Start)

Fast, lightweight installation with keyword search only:

# With uv (recommended)
uv tool install memex

# With pip
pip install memex

# Verify installation
mx --version

This gives you:

• Full CLI functionality (mx command)
• MCP server for Claude Desktop
• BM25 keyword search via Whoosh
• ~100MB footprint

Full Install (Semantic Search)

Add semantic search for meaning-based queries:

# With uv
uv tool install "memex[semantic]"

# With pip
pip install "memex[semantic]"

This adds:

• ChromaDB for vector storage
• sentence-transformers for embeddings
• CPU-only PyTorch (~500MB additional)
• First search downloads embedding model (~100MB)

From Source

For development or customization:

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

# Core only (~100MB)
uv sync

# With semantic search (~600MB)
uv sync --all-extras

GPU Support (Optional)

If you have an NVIDIA GPU and want CUDA acceleration:

uv sync --all-extras --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. MCP Server Setup - Configure for Claude Desktop