cembedding 0.5.0

Local-first embedding server: vector generation + index/search over HTTP (ONNX on-device or API providers). The reference /embed server for CPersona.

CEmbedding

Local-first embedding server

Vector embeddings over a tiny HTTP contract. On-device ONNX or any OpenAI-compatible API. The reference /embed server for CPersona.

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Standalone repository — extracted from the (now private) clotohub-servers monorepo so it can be used on its own. ClotoCore users get this through the in-app marketplace (ClotoHub); everyone else can run it directly as described below.

What it is

A small server that turns text into vectors. It speaks a minimal HTTP contract so anything can call it — its primary consumer is CPersona, whose hybrid search uses it for the vector-similarity layer. It can run a model on-device via ONNX (no API key, no network) or proxy an OpenAI-compatible API.

It also exposes an MCP (stdio) surface and an optional persistent vector index (/index, /search), but the HTTP /embed endpoint is all CPersona needs.

The /embed contract

POST /embed
Request:  { "texts": ["string", ...] }                 # non-empty array, max 100 per batch
Response: { "embeddings": [[float, ...], ...], "dimensions": <int> }

Point any client (e.g. CPersona's CPERSONA_EMBEDDING_URL / generic EMBEDDING_HTTP_URL) at http://127.0.0.1:8401/embed.

Quick Start (on-device ONNX)

Prerequisites: Python 3.10+

# Download a model into ./data/models (jina-v5-nano is what CPersona is tuned for)
uvx --from "cembedding[onnx]" cembedding-download-model --model jina-v5-nano

# Run the server (reads ./data/models from the current directory)
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=onnx_jina_v5_nano uvx --from "cembedding[onnx]" cembedding

Or install it onto your PATH with pip install "cembedding[onnx]", then run cembedding-download-model --model jina-v5-nano and cembedding.

From source (development):

git clone https://github.com/Cloto-dev/CEmbedding.git
cd CEmbedding
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate          # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install ".[onnx]"
python -m cembedding.download_model --model jina-v5-nano
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=onnx_jina_v5_nano python -m cembedding   # or: python server.py

You should see HTTP embedding endpoint started on http://127.0.0.1:8401/embed. Verify it:

curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8401/embed \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"texts":["hello world"]}' | head -c 200

Providers

Set EMBEDDING_PROVIDER:

Value	Model	Notes
onnx_jina_v5_nano	jina-v5-nano (33M, 768d)	Local CPU, what CPersona is benchmarked against
onnx_bge_m3	bge-m3	Local CPU, larger / multilingual
onnx_miniml	all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (22M, 384d)	Local CPU, smallest
mlx_bge_m3	bge-m3 (MLX)	Apple Silicon only — pip install ".[mlx]"
api_openai	provider's model	OpenAI-compatible API; needs EMBEDDING_API_KEY (+ optional EMBEDDING_API_URL, EMBEDDING_MODEL)

Download a local model with cembedding-download-model --model {miniml,jina-v5-nano,bge-m3} (or python -m cembedding.download_model ... from a source checkout; fetched from HuggingFace into ./data/models, not committed to this repo).

Configuration

Env var	Default	Description
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	api_openai	Provider (see table above)
EMBEDDING_HTTP_PORT	8401	HTTP port for /embed
EMBEDDING_INDEX_ENABLED	true	Enable the persistent vector index endpoints (/index, /search, /remove, /purge)
ONNX_MODEL_DIR	(auto)	Override the model directory for ONNX providers
ONNX_EP_PREFERENCE	(auto)	ONNX execution providers, comma-separated. Empty = auto (CoreML on macOS, DirectML on Windows, else CPU; CPU always ensured)
ONNX_MAX_SEQ_LEN	2048	Max tokenization length (1–8192; MiniLM clamped to 512 internally)
EMBEDDING_API_KEY	—	Required for api_openai
EMBEDDING_API_URL	https://api.openai.com/v1/embeddings	API endpoint for api_openai

Use with CPersona

Run this server, then tell CPersona to use it:

# CPersona MCP config env
CPERSONA_EMBEDDING_MODE=http
CPERSONA_EMBEDDING_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8401/embed

Without an embedding server CPersona still works (FTS5 + keyword search); adding one enables the vector-similarity layer.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.