local-embed

A standalone local embedding service. It loads one local GGUF (llama-cpp) or HF transformer embedding model and exposes it as an OpenAI-compatible /v1/embeddings URL — any OpenAI-compatible client can embed text through it.

On one port it serves two surfaces: an OpenAI-compatible /v1/* API for embedding, and a Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint at /mcp.

local-embed is three things at once: an independent app, a Streamable HTTP MCP server (see As an MCP server), and a conforming slife plugin (see Running as a slife embedding backend). The product is the embedding URL; the MCP and plugin surfaces are how hosts manage the same standalone service.

Two backends: gguf loads a local .gguf file (llama-cpp-python); transformer loads an HF repo id from the local hub cache (sentence-transformers). The server never downloads weights — you pre-download them (Model weights).

   any OpenAI-compatible client ──┐
   slife (memdb / memfiles) ──────┤── POST /v1/embeddings ──┐
   vector DB / RAG pipeline ──────┘                          ▼
                                              ┌───────────────────────┐
   slife (plugin host) ─── /mcp ────────────> │       local-embed     │
                                              │  models load on demand │
                                              └───────────────────────┘

Features

• OpenAI-compatible /v1/embeddings + Models API + /health.
• Two backends (GGUF / transformer), many models as peers — each request names the one it wants (standard OpenAI semantics, no "active model").
• Lazy load — startup is fast; each model materialises on the first request that names it (per-model autoload: true preloads a specific model at startup).
• Real dimension reported after load (a guessed width is never served).
• Runs standalone, and can also be loaded as a slife plugin (see Running as a slife embedding backend).

Requires Python ≥ 3.13.

Install

The core package is fastmcp + starlette + ruamel.yaml (round-trip YAML — the comment-preserving config parser). The model backends are installed separately, per the platform matrix below.

One-click installers (install uv if needed, then uv tool install --force --python '>=3.13' local-embed — the backend is not included, see below):

# macOS / Linux / WSL
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/juzcn/local-embed/main/install.sh | bash

# Windows PowerShell
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/juzcn/local-embed/main/install.ps1 | iex"

Manual installs are equivalent:

# the app + CLI (standalone tool)
uv tool install --force --python '>=3.13' local-embed

--python '>=3.13' is not optional. Without it uv builds the tool environment on whichever interpreter it prefers; local-embed needs ≥ 3.13, so an older environment has no compatible release to install at all. With the constraint, uv fetches a suitable interpreter or fails loudly.

The backend is not part of the package — there are no extras, because every real install needs a per-platform index or CMAKE_ARGS that an extra cannot carry. Add it with uv pip install --python "$(uv tool dir)/local-embed" …, per the matrix below.

--force (used by the installers too) is idempotent — the first run installs, re-running updates to the latest PyPI release. A plain uv tool install local-embed no-ops when the tool is already installed.

If you run local-embed inside an existing environment (alongside another tool), install the backend into that environment's interpreter instead of creating a separate one.

There is nothing to look up, and no bin/-vs-Scripts/ question: uv takes the venv root directory and finds the interpreter inside it itself, and uv tool dir prints the root that holds every tool venv. So set the target once and reuse it:

PY="$(uv tool dir)/local-embed"   # installed by the installers above
PY="$(uv tool dir)/slife"         # running as slife's embedding backend
PY=.venv                          # a project checkout (run from its root)

Pick the line that matches your install, then uv pip install --python "$PY" llama-cpp-python — the matrix below uses the same $PY.

Every command block here is POSIX shell (bash / zsh / WSL). On Windows PowerShell the same two things have different spellings, and nothing else changes: the variable assignment, and the VAR=value command prefix that sets an environment variable for one command.

$PY = "$(uv tool dir)\slife"          # the same target, PowerShell syntax
$env:CMAKE_ARGS = "-DGGML_CUDA=on"    # then run the uv pip install on its own line

The install you ran decides which line:

• Tool install — uv tool install local-embed and the installers above land in uv's tool venv. When local-embed runs as slife's embedding backend the serving process is slife's, so the backend belongs in slife's tool venv (install.sh / install.ps1 install slife). A fresh uv tool install local-embed is not that fix — it builds a separate standalone tool rather than the environment that is serving.
• Project checkout — that checkout's .venv.
• A running server — a missing backend is reported at startup with the exact command, its own interpreter included.

--python is optional only when the target is unambiguous: uv resolves --python > $VIRTUAL_ENV > .venv in the current directory (walking up), and errors when it finds none — a venv is never created implicitly. Give it explicitly whenever more than one venv is in play.

A venv is platform-bound: a Windows-created .venv (Scripts\, Lib\) has no bin/python and cannot be used from WSL or a Linux container. Keep the Linux venv on the Linux filesystem (~/venvs/local-embed) rather than creating one inside a checkout that lives on a Windows drive — the second uv venv rewrites pyvenv.cfg and breaks the Windows one.

gguf backend — platform matrix

gguf (llama-cpp-python) is platform-sensitive: PyPI ships only the sdist (no prebuilt wheels), so on Linux / WSL / macOS a plain install compiles from source (needs a C compiler + CMake ≥ 3.21). Windows has no default C toolchain (no MSVC), so it uses the upstream prebuilt wheels — CPU or CUDA — neither needing MSVC. GPU variants pass CMAKE_ARGS. Every command takes the target as $PY, the environment set under Install:

Swap the cu124 suffix for the CUDA series whose runtime is installed on the machine — cu118, cu121 … cu125, cu130, cu132 — not merely the one the driver supports; the next paragraph is why that distinction bites. Upstream asks for compute capability ≥ 6.0 on the CUDA 12 wheels and ≥ 7.5 on CUDA 13.

Those wheels link their CUDA series dynamically — a cu124 wheel imports cudart64_12.dll and cublas64_12.dll — so that runtime has to be installed for real. The NVIDIA driver alone is not enough: it provides nvcuda.dll and nothing more. A CUDA 12 wheel on a machine with only the CUDA 11.8 toolkit (cudart64_110.dll) fails, and the error names the outermost module rather than the missing one:

RuntimeError: Failed to load shared library '...\llama_cpp\lib\llama.dll'

The real gap is two levels down: llama.dll → ggml.dll → ggml-cuda.dll → cudart64_12.dll. Match the index to the CUDA major version you have (cu118 against a CUDA 11.8 install), or install the CUDA runtime for the series you picked. Determine the version rather than assuming it — they are two different numbers on the same machine: nvidia-smi prints the newest CUDA the driver can drive (a ceiling), while nvcc --version prints the toolkit actually installed. The wheel needs the second. --extra-index-url .../whl/cpu sidesteps it all, at the cost of GPU offload.

The two Windows rows are the workarounds — everywhere else uses the standard source build from PyPI. Take a CUDA row only with a GPU present: without a device it offloads nothing, so the Linux row buys a longer build and the Windows row a larger download, both for plain CPU speed. If the gguf backend is missing, the server errors at startup with the exact command for your platform.

transformer backend — CPU-only machines

sentence-transformers pulls torch, and on Linux PyPI's torch is the CUDA build: its metadata requires a dozen-odd nvidia-* runtime wheels (~2.5 GB) whether or not a GPU exists. They are runtime libraries, not a toolkit — nothing in that set is nvcc — so on a GPU-less machine they enable nothing at all.

Install the CPU wheel first, from PyTorch's own index; the second command then finds torch satisfied and pulls no nvidia-*:

uv pip install --python "$PY" --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu torch
uv pip install --python "$PY" sentence-transformers

Swapping the CUDA build out afterwards leaves those wheels orphaned — nothing depends on them any more — so drop them:

uv pip freeze --python "$PY" | grep ^nvidia | cut -d= -f1 | xargs uv pip uninstall --python "$PY"

macOS needs none of this (its torch is CPU/MPS). The gguf backend touches none of it either: llama-cpp-python has no torch dependency.

transformer backend — Linux / WSL + NVIDIA GPU

The plain install is already the right one — nothing to route around:

uv pip install --python "$PY" sentence-transformers

On Linux, PyPI's torch is the CUDA build with its nvidia-* runtime wheels, which is the problem described above only on a machine without a GPU; with one, that is exactly what you want. The runtime comes from those wheels, so the nvidia-smi ceiling is the check that matters (driver new enough for the torch build), and the torch.cuda.is_available() check below confirms it.

transformer backend — Windows + NVIDIA GPU

PyPI's Windows torch is the mirror image of Linux's: a ~124 MB CPU-only wheel, with every nvidia-* requirement in its metadata marked platform_system == "Linux". A plain uv pip install sentence-transformers therefore gets a CPU torch — silently, with no error, just no GPU.

The CUDA build exists only on PyTorch's own index, as +cuXXX wheels that bundle the CUDA runtime DLLs (hence ~2 GB, and no nvidia-* packages on Windows) — bundled, unlike the gguf wheels above, which link the runtime externally: so here the nvidia-smi driver ceiling is the right rule, and a separately installed CUDA toolkit is not needed:

uv pip install --python "$PY" --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu130 torch
uv pip install --python "$PY" sentence-transformers

Two steps, same ordering as the CPU row and for the same reason. Pick cuXXX at most the CUDA version nvidia-smi reports — on Windows / cp313 the newest torch each index resolves is:

Confirm the build, not just the version — a CPU torch installs cleanly and reports a plain 2.14.0:

uv run --python "$PY" python -c "import torch; print(torch.__version__, torch.cuda.is_available())"
# 2.14.0+cu130 True

The +cuXXX suffix is the tell; without it nothing will offload.

Both backends at once

One uv pip install:

uv pip install --python "$PY" sentence-transformers llama-cpp-python
# Windows CPU: add the upstream wheel index (see the matrix above)

On a GPU-less Linux machine, install torch from the CPU index first (above) — this same command otherwise drags in the ~2.5 GB of nvidia-* wheels.

Installing does not fetch a model — get the weights first.

Quick start

1. Install the app and a backend (above).

2. Download weights — see Model weights.

3. Configure a model — the CLI helper writes local_embed.yaml:

   local-embed set BAAI/bge-m3 --HF_HUB_CACHE <dir>     # transformer
   local-embed set-gguf bge-m3 --path D:\models\bge.gguf # gguf
   

4. Start the service:

   local-embed          # serve on http://127.0.0.1:17347
   

5. Embed text — point any OpenAI-compatible client at http://127.0.0.1:17347/v1 (see HTTP API).

Configuration: local_embed.yaml

Everything — host, port, models, backend — comes from local_embed.yaml, written by the CLI helpers or by hand. Path resolution: $LOCAL_EMBED_FILE > ~/.local-embed/local_embed.yaml — the working directory is never consulted. A host that wants the config beside its own exports $LOCAL_EMBED_FILE; Slife seeds ~/.local-embed/local_embed.yaml and relies on the default.

models:
  "bge-m3":
    backend: "gguf"
    gguf_path: "…"
    device: ""
    autoload: false
  "bge-m3-transformer":
    backend: "transformer"
    model: "BAAI/bge-m3"
    device: ""
env:                                       # injected into this process before any model loads
  HF_HUB_CACHE: 'C:\…\HuggingFace\hub'     # where transformer repos resolve
  HF_HUB_OFFLINE: "1"                      # force offline
host: "127.0.0.1"                          # standalone only
port: 17347                                # standalone only

• models — map of name → {backend, gguf_path | model, device, max_tokens, autoload}. Every configured model is a peer; there is no active_model — each request names the model it wants (standard OpenAI semantics).
• autoload (per model, default false) — a model's weights are large and memory-hungry, so nothing loads until a request names it (lazy). autoload: true on one model eager-loads just that model in the background at startup (memory paid up front for a warm first embed); every unflagged model stays lazy.
• env: — injected before any backend loads; an existing shell env var wins. Without HF_HUB_CACHE, transformer repos resolve against the default cache and a model downloaded elsewhere is silently re-fetched.
• Single-model convenience — top-level backend/model/gguf_path/device — still works.

Reads are read-only at runtime — the server has no config-mutating tools.

Model weights

The server never downloads models; both backends fail at load time when their weights are missing (gguf needs the gguf_path file, transformer needs the repo in the HF cache).

GGUF

.gguf files are, in general, community conversions — upstream releases are PyTorch weights, not GGUF — so there is no single authoritative source: conversions are scattered across Hugging Face, ModelScope, Ollama, llama.cpp community uploads and various project sites. Pick any source you trust; the transport doesn't matter, local-embed only needs the file on disk.

HF is the most common host and its CLI pulls a single file:

uv tool install "huggingface-hub[cli]"      # provides `hf`
hf download <owner>/<repo> <model>.gguf --local-dir D:\models\bge-m3
# one-off, no permanent tool install:
uvx --from huggingface-hub hf download <owner>/<repo> <model>.gguf --local-dir D:\models\bge-m3

Any source also works from a browser or wget/curl — on HF, every file is fetchable from https://huggingface.co/<owner>/<repo>/resolve/main/<model>.gguf.

Prefer a high-fidelity quant such as Q8_0 (~99 % of the original accuracy at roughly a third of the size). Point gguf_path at the file:

models:
  "bge-m3":
    backend: "gguf"
    gguf_path: 'D:\models\bge-m3\bge-m3-q8_0.gguf'

Transformer

sentence-transformers resolves an HF repo id against the local hub cache:

hf download BAAI/bge-m3     # -> ~/.cache/huggingface/hub/models--BAAI--bge-m3

models:
  "bge-m3":
    backend: "transformer"
    model: "BAAI/bge-m3"

HTTP API (OpenAI-compatible)

The endpoint surface is a superset of the OpenAI Embeddings + Models APIs, all on one port.

POST /v1/embeddings

curl http://127.0.0.1:17347/v1/embeddings \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"model": "bge-m3", "input": ["hello world", "another text"]}'

input is a string or a list of strings; model is required and names any configured model. Returns the standard shape:

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {"object": "embedding", "index": 0, "embedding": [0.012, ...]},
    {"object": "embedding", "index": 1, "embedding": [...]}
  ],
  "model": "bge-m3",
  "usage": {"prompt_tokens": 3, "total_tokens": 3}
}

OpenAI forbids empty-string input, so an empty/whitespace string in the batch is rejected with a strict 400 — there is no zero-vector row alignment on the wire; filter blanks before batching.

Errors — the OpenAI contract

Every error uses the standard envelope {"error": {"message", "type", "param", "code"}} (param / code are null when not applicable):

Split long documents into pieces of at most max_tokens tokens client-side (slife's semantic drainer does this automatically).

GET /v1/models

Every configured model, each with its real embedding dimension (dimension / dimension_known), backend, and load state. The listing is standard — no active marker, all models are peers.

GET /v1/models/{id}

One model's detail (the OpenAI retrieve endpoint); 404 with the standard error envelope when the id is unknown.

GET /health

Liveness + engine state: {status, models: [{name, backend, model, dimension, dimension_known, loaded, available, max_tokens}]} — status is ok when any configured model's backend is usable.

Any OpenAI client

Point base_url at http://127.0.0.1:17347/v1 — the openai package, or any OpenAI-compatible SDK:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://127.0.0.1:17347/v1", api_key="local")
vecs = client.embeddings.create(model="bge-m3", input=["hello"])

CLI (auxiliary tools)

The local-embed CLI is a helper, not the product: it starts the service and writes the config file. The service is configured by local_embed.yaml and consumed over the HTTP API — the CLI only makes both steps convenient.

local-embed — run the service

local-embed                 # binds 127.0.0.1:17347 by default

The CLI takes no model/endpoint flags — the config is the only source of truth. A port already in use is a hard error with one actionable line (no silent fallback to a free port): stop the other instance or change port in the config. Running the CLI while a service already holds the port is a mistake worth reporting — the same situation is handled differently when slife spawns the plugin (see Adopting a running service).

local-embed set / set-gguf — write the config

set (transformer) and set-gguf (gguf) upsert a model in the config and pin port (and, for set, the HF cache + offline flag). Both are idempotent — re-running yields the same config — and leave other models untouched. There is no active_model: every configured model is a peer and requests name the one they want.

local-embed set BAAI/bge-m3 [--HF_HUB_CACHE <dir>] [--port 17347]
local-embed set-gguf bge-m3 --path D:\models\bge-m3\bge-m3-q8_0.gguf [--port 17347]

Any error — cache unset, repo not in cache, file missing — exits non-zero and writes nothing. Changes apply on the next server start.

Model download — offline by default

HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 by default, so the server never downloads a model (it's too slow). Make the model available yourself — see Model weights: hf download BAAI/bge-m3 for the transformer route (into the HF cache), or drop a GGUF file and point gguf_path at it.

Dimension

The real output width is only known once the model is loaded (n_embd / get_sentence_embedding_dimension). GET /v1/models (or /v1/models/{id}) reports the real dimension, so a client can size its vector table correctly — a wrong width silently drops every mis-sized embedding. A guessed dimension is never served as authoritative.

As an MCP server

/mcp is a standard MCP Streamable HTTP endpoint, so any MCP client that supports Streamable HTTP can register local-embed as an MCP server. Start it first:

local-embed          # serve on http://127.0.0.1:17347

then register the URL. The MCP client config shape is {"type": "http", "url": …} — for example, Claude Code's .mcp.json (or ~/.claude.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "local-embed": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:17347/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Or with the Claude Code CLI:

claude mcp add --transport http local-embed http://127.0.0.1:17347/mcp

Claude Desktop registers remote HTTP MCP servers through its connectors UI (Settings → Connectors → Add connector → Remote), not claude_desktop_config.json — and a remote connector expects a hosted HTTPS URL, so a 127.0.0.1 server needs a tunnel or a stdio→HTTP bridge to be reachable from the desktop app.

Over MCP you get status, not embeddings. The only MCP tool is the internal __check status probe (model list, dimensions, load state) — local-embed is a service-provider MCP server, not a tool provider. To embed text, point your consumer at the OpenAI-compatible /v1/* API instead. A client that only speaks stdio can reach it through a stdio→HTTP bridge (e.g. mcp-remote).

Running as a slife embedding backend

local-embed is a plugin — one row in slife's central plugin spec, so slife spawns it, watches it, and reports it like every other child plugin. It is also runnable standalone (local-embed on PATH), which is what the CLI is for; slife still consumes the MODEL SERVICE purely as an OpenAI-compatible HTTP endpoint (never through MCP tools).

Because its config pins a port that a static embeddings base_url points at, it is the one plugin with a fixed port: it binds that port itself, and that port is the service's identity — whoever holds it is local-embed as far as every host is concerned.

A second instance is therefore not automatically a mistake. When slife spawns the plugin and finds a local-embed already serving the port (a daemon in WSL shared by several hosts, or one you started by hand), the child adopts it rather than failing; see below. The same port held by anything that is not a local-embed is still a hard error, with the reason, and the running service is left untouched.

Adopting a running service

The spawned child probes GET /health on the configured port before serving:

• A local-embed answers → it is adopted. The child serves MCP on an OS-assigned port, loads no model of its own, and its __check reports the adopted service's facts (re-read on every probe, so a service that stops answering reads as unavailable, not as stale good news). Hosts' base_url was already being served — by an instance that may well be warm.
• Nothing answers, or something else does → the child binds the port and serves as usual; a stranger still fails loudly rather than being adopted.

Adoption is automatic and needs no config. It is what makes one shared service practical: slife on Windows and jack on WSL can both point at a single local-embed, instead of each holding its own copy of a ~2 GB model.

The adopter also watches: if the adopted service goes away, the child takes the fixed port over and serves embeddings itself, warming the models flagged autoload, so hosts keep embedding without a restart. The reverse is not possible — once the child holds the port, the original service cannot come back until the child restarts.

Point slife's embedding config at the daemon's stable port:

embeddings:
  providers:
    local:
      base_url: "http://127.0.0.1:17347/v1"  # stable port from local_embed.yaml
      api_key: "local"
      model: "bge-m3"                        # id POSTed on /v1/embeddings
  active_model: "local"      # a provider id — never a "provider/model" ref
  enabled: true

slife treats every embedding model as a remote OpenAI-compatible endpoint — local-embed is one such endpoint. The model a request hits is the one the caller names; when the config names no model, slife discovers it from GET /v1/models (the first entry) on load. When the daemon is unreachable, slife degrades gracefully to keyword search (check_embeddings in system_health probes the active provider's HTTP endpoint and reports it down — it never assumes that provider is local-embed).

The MCP surface it still serves is the internal __check (engine status: model list, dimensions, load state) — a service-provider facade for direct probing, not a slife plugin contract. It also serves plain OpenAPI routes (/v1/embeddings, /v1/models, /health) on the same port via @mcp.custom_route — one port, two protocols, no slife involvement.

Troubleshooting

Re-adding a backend (manual installs)

The backends are not package extras — every real install needs a per-platform choice (a PyTorch index, CMAKE_ARGS, or the upstream Windows wheel index). Install the package directly; the platform matrix under Install above is the authority on which command your platform needs:

# a tool install (the installers) — into the tool's own venv:
uv pip install --python "$(uv tool dir)/local-embed" llama-cpp-python
uv pip install --python "$(uv tool dir)/local-embed" sentence-transformers

# uvx / git checkout — there is no tool venv; add the package to the ephemeral env:
uvx --with llama-cpp-python --from git+https://github.com/juzcn/local-embed.git local-embed

Add --extra-index-url …/whl/cpu (or …/whl/cu124) on Windows and CMAKE_ARGS for the Linux/Metal GPU builds; on a GPU-less Linux machine install the CPU torch first — the step-1 bullets give both. The legacy in-process embedding backends use these same two packages, so this covers them too.

Re-running an installer rebuilds the tool environment (uv tool install --force), which drops a backend added this way — re-run the uv pip install above after an upgrade.

Development

Requires uv.

uv sync --locked     # create .venv with runtime + dev dependencies
uv run pytest        # run the test suite
uv run ruff check    # lint
uv run ruff format   # format
uv run pyright       # type-check

CI runs the suite on Windows, macOS, and Linux (.github/workflows/ci.yml), plus lint and type-check jobs.

Releasing

Bump version in pyproject.toml, commit, then push a tag with the same version:

git tag -a v0.3.1 -m "local-embed 0.3.1" && git push origin v0.3.1

.github/workflows/publish.yml fails unless the tag matches the package version exactly, then uploads to PyPI via trusted publishing.

License

MIT — see the repository root LICENSE.