Terraphim AI Assistant

Terraphim is a privacy-first AI assistant that works for you under your complete control and is fully deterministic.

You can use it as a local search engine, configured to search for different types of content on StackOverflow, GitHub, and the local filesystem using a predefined folder, which includes your Markdown files.

Terraphim operates on local infrastructure and works exclusively for the owner's benefit.

https://github.com/terraphim/terraphim-ai/assets/175809/59c74652-bab4-45b2-99aa-1c0c9b90196b

Why Terraphim?

There are growing concerns about the privacy of data and the sharing of individuals' data across an ever-growing list of services, some of which have questionable data ethics policies. ^1,2,3,4

Individuals struggle to find relevant information in different knowledge repositories:

• Personal ones like Roam Research, Obsidian, Coda, and Notion.
• Team-focused ones like Jira, Confluence, and SharePoint.
• Public sources such as StackOverflow and GitHub.

Terraphim aims to bridge this gap by providing a privacy-first AI assistant that operates locally on the user's hardware, enabling seamless access to various knowledge repositories without compromising privacy. With Terraphim, users can efficiently search personal, team-focused, and public knowledge sources, ensuring that their data remains under their control at all times.

Getting Started

Quick Start

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/terraphim/terraphim-ai.git
   cd terraphim-ai
   

2. Set up development environment:

   # Install Git hooks for code quality (optional but recommended)
   ./scripts/install-hooks.sh
   

3. Start the backend server:

   cargo run
   

   This starts an API endpoint for indexing and querying documents.

4. Run the frontend (choose one):

   Web Frontend:

   cd desktop
   yarn install
   yarn run dev
   

   Desktop App (Tauri):

   cd desktop
   yarn install
   yarn run tauri dev
   

   Terminal Interface (TUI):

   cargo run --bin terraphim-tui
   

(See the desktop README and development setup guide for more details.)

Terminology

When configuring or working on Terraphim, you will encounter the following terms and concepts:

• Haystack: A data source that Terraphim can search through. For example, this could be a folder on your computer, a Notion workspace, or your email account.
• Knowledge Graph: A structured graph of information created from a haystack, where nodes represent entities and edges represent relationships between them.
• Profile: An endpoint for persisting user data (e.g. Amazon S3, sled, or rocksdb).
• Role: A role is a set of settings that define the default behavior of the AI assistant. For example, a developer role will search for code-related content, while a "father" role might search for parenting-related content. Each Terraphim role has its own separate knowledge graph that contains relevant concepts, with all synonyms.
• Rolegraph: A structure for ingesting documents into Terraphim. It is a knowledge graph that uses a scoring function (an Aho-Corasick automata build from the knowledge graph) for ranking results.

Why "Terraphim"?

The term is originally taken from the Relict series of science fiction novels by Vasiliy Golovachev. Terraphim is an artificial intelligence living inside a spacesuit (part of an exocortex), or inside your house or vehicle, and it is designed to help you with your tasks. You can carry it around with you. Similar entities now common in science fiction, for example Destiny 2 has entity called Ghost.

Or in Star Wars Jedi Survivor there is an AI assistant BD-1.

The compactness and mobility of such AI assistant drives the [[Design Decisions]] of Terraphim.

Terraphim is a trademark registered in the UK, US and internationally (WIPO). All other trademarks mentioned above are the property of their respective owners.

Configuration

Storage Backends

Terraphim supports multiple storage backends for different deployment scenarios:

Local Development (Default)

The system uses local storage backends by default, requiring no additional configuration:

• Memory: In-memory storage for testing
• DashMap: High-performance concurrent storage
• SQLite: Local database storage
• ReDB: Embedded key-value database

Cloud Storage (Optional)

For production deployments, you can optionally enable cloud storage:

AWS S3 Configuration

To use AWS S3 storage, set the following environment variables:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="your-access-key"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="your-secret-key"
export TERRAPHIM_PROFILE_S3_REGION="us-east-1"
export TERRAPHIM_PROFILE_S3_ENDPOINT="https://s3.amazonaws.com/"

Note: AWS credentials are completely optional. The system will automatically fall back to local storage if AWS credentials are not available, ensuring local development works without any cloud dependencies.

Environment Variables

• TERRAPHIM_SETTINGS_PATH: Override the settings file path
• TERRAPHIM_DATA_PATH: Set the data directory location
• LOG_LEVEL: Set logging verbosity (debug, info, warn, error)

Installation Methods

For End Users

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install terraphim/terraphim-ai/terraphim-ai

This installs the server, TUI, and desktop app (macOS only).

Debian/Ubuntu

# Download from GitHub releases
sudo dpkg -i terraphim-server_*.deb
sudo dpkg -i terraphim-tui_*.deb
sudo dpkg -i terraphim-ai-desktop_*.deb

Docker

docker run ghcr.io/terraphim/terraphim-server:latest

Direct Download

Download pre-built binaries from GitHub Releases.

Development Setup

For development, see our comprehensive Development Setup Guide which covers:

• Code quality tools and pre-commit hooks
• Multiple installation options (no Python required!)
• IDE integration and troubleshooting

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here's how to get started:

1. Read our guides:

   • Contributing guide
   • Development setup

2. Set up your environment:

   git clone https://github.com/terraphim/terraphim-ai.git
   cd terraphim-ai
   ./scripts/install-hooks.sh  # Sets up code quality tools
   

3. Code quality standards:

   • All commits must follow Conventional Commits
   • Rust code is automatically formatted with cargo fmt
   • JavaScript/TypeScript uses Biome for linting and formatting
   • No secrets or large files allowed in commits

4. Make your changes:

   • Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feat/your-feature
   • Make your changes with proper tests
   • Commit with conventional format: git commit -m "feat: add amazing feature"
   • Push and create a Pull Request

Dependency Management

Important: Some dependencies are pinned to specific versions to ensure compatibility:

• wiremock = "0.6.4" - Version 0.6.5 uses unstable Rust features requiring nightly compiler
• schemars = "0.8.22" - Version 1.0+ introduces breaking API changes
• thiserror = "1.0.x" - Version 2.0+ requires code migration for breaking changes

These constraints are enforced in .github/dependabot.yml to prevent automatic updates that would break CI. Future upgrades require manual code migration work.

Contributors are awesome

License

This project is licensed under the Apache license.