gsas-query — GSAS-II Documentation Assistant

Semantic search + AI answers over the full GSAS-II documentation set: 129 HTML pages (home, help, and all 62 tutorials) plus the Programmer's Guide and Powder Crystallography book PDFs.

Answers include inline citations — every [N] in the response is a clickable link to the exact documentation section that supported that sentence.

All embedding and retrieval runs on your machine — no data is sent externally unless you explicitly choose the Anthropic API backend.

Installation

pip

pip install gsas-query

Or install directly from source:

pip install git+https://github.com/pawantr/Query-GSAS.git

conda

conda install -c conda-forge gsas-query

Into an existing GSAS-II environment

# Activate the GSAS-II conda environment first, then:
pip install gsas-query

Development / editable install

git clone https://github.com/pawantr/Query-GSAS.git
cd Query-GSAS
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Ollama — free local LLM (recommended)

brew install ollama          # macOS; see https://ollama.com for other platforms
ollama serve &               # start the local server
ollama pull llama3           # ~5 GB one-time download

Other model options: llama3:70b (better quality, ~40 GB), mistral (faster, ~4 GB).

First-time setup — index the documentation

Run once, or again when the docs are updated. Fetches ~130 web pages and 2 PDFs, embeds everything locally. Takes ~10–20 minutes.

By default the index is stored in ~/.GSASII/gsas_query/chroma_db (see User data directory for details).

gsas-query --setup              # all sources (HTML + PDFs)
gsas-query --setup --html-only  # skip PDFs, faster (~5 min)
gsas-query --setup --reset      # drop index and rebuild from scratch

HTML-only index is 21 Mb. With GSAS-II Programmer's Guide, 41 Mb; with textbook as well, 53 Mb.

Usage

Command-line — single question

gsas-query "How do I set up a sequential refinement?"
gsas-query "What parameters control the background in Rietveld?"
gsas-query "How do I export a CIF for publication?"

Command-line — interactive REPL

Multi-turn conversation that remembers previous questions in the session.

gsas-query

GSAS-II Documentation Assistant
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Knowledge base: 3,847 indexed chunks.
LLM backend: ollama
Type your question and press Enter. 'clear' resets history, 'quit' exits.

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
You: How do I constrain lattice parameters?
Thinking…
Assistant: To constrain lattice parameters in GSAS-II, open the Constraints
tab in the Phase panel [1]…

Sources:
  [94%] Help: Phase General  ›  Constraints
         https://advancedphotonsource.github.io/GSAS-II-tutorials/help/phasegeneral.html

Commands inside the REPL: clear (reset history), quit / exit (exit).

Desktop GUI

Opens a standalone floating dialog — stays open while you work in GSAS-II.

gsas-query --gui

Embed in GSAS-II Help menu

Add one call to the GSAS-II menu handler (e.g. in GSASIIctrl.py):

def OnDocAssistant(self, event):
    try:
        from gsas_query.gui import show_assistant
        show_assistant(self)          # self = GSAS-II main frame
    except ImportError:
        wx.MessageBox(
            "GSAS-II Assistant not installed.\n"
            "Run: pip install gsas-query",
            "Not available"
        )

show_assistant() is idempotent — calling it a second time raises the existing window rather than opening a duplicate.

Web UI

gsas-query-web                          # serves on 0.0.0.0:8000
HOST=127.0.0.1 PORT=8765 gsas-query-web

Then open http://localhost:8000 in a browser. The web UI shows inline citations as clickable superscript links and source chips below each answer.

CLI flags reference

LLM backend configuration

Set LLM_BACKEND in a .env file or the environment:

gsas-query --backend retrieval "What is Le Bail extraction?"
gsas-query --backend ollama --model mistral "How do I index peaks?"

Inline citations

When using Ollama or Anthropic backends, answers contain [N] markers inline. In the web UI these render as clickable superscript links opening the exact source section. In the CLI, source URLs are listed below the answer with relevance scores.

Doc sources

All HTML sources are fetched from https://advancedphotonsource.github.io/GSAS-II-tutorials/. The book PDF is fetched from the latest GitHub release of briantoby/PowderCrystallography.

Re-indexing when docs update

gsas-query --setup --reset

Or trigger via the web API (requires ADMIN_KEY set in .env):

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/ingest -H "X-Admin-Key: your-key"

Security and deployment notes

• All embeddings and vector search run locally (sentence-transformers, ChromaDB).
• Ollama runs entirely on-premises — no queries leave the network.
• The anthropic backend sends question text and retrieved doc chunks to Anthropic. Do not use it in air-gapped or data-sensitive environments.
• The web server applies per-IP rate limiting (default 30 req/min, configurable via RATE_LIMIT_RPM in .env).
• The /ingest endpoint is protected by X-Admin-Key; leave ADMIN_KEY blank to disable remote re-indexing.

User data directory

The ChromaDB index is stored at ~/.GSASII/gsas_query/chroma_db by default. Override with the GSAS_QUERY_DATA_DIR environment variable:

GSAS_QUERY_DATA_DIR=/data/gsas_query gsas-query --setup