Locus

Turn any unstructured corpus into validated, source-grounded tabular data — ready to feed an LLM.

Locus packages data operations as reusable, versioned images. You pull an image, point it at your own data, run it locally, and get a clean table where every cell carries its source location and a faithfulness score. Images compose into pipelines, and you can publish your own to Locus Hub (public or private).

Install

pip install locus-etl                  # core: CLI + engine + CSV/records/provenance
pip install "locus-etl[standard]"      # + PDF, HTML, SQL, normalize, result UI
pip install "locus-etl[all]"           # everything, incl. OCR/LLM/embeddings (heavy)

The CLI command is locus (Python 3.11+). Quote the brackets — your shell treats them as a glob otherwise (zsh: no matches found).

Pick targeted extras if you prefer a lean install: pip install "locus-etl[pdf,serve,llm,oci]" — pdf (PDF parsing), html, sql, normalize, serve (Hub/result UI), llm (LLM engine), ocr, dedup, embeddings, docling, oci (OCI registry), docker.

Quickstart

locus catalog list                  # see the official image catalog
printf 'name,amount\nAcme,100\nGlobex,200\n' > data.csv
cat > locusfile.yaml <<EOF
image: doc-to-tables
source: { type: files, path: ./data.csv }
EOF
locus run locusfile.yaml --export out.csv   # grounded table + _lineage column
locus run locusfile.yaml --serve            # interactive result view (table + charts)
locus hub                                    # browse the catalog in a local web UI

Declare output and a live visualization right in the Locusfile (Dockerfile-style):

image: doc-to-tables
source: { type: files, path: ./data.csv }
export:
  path: ./out.json        # csv | parquet | json | markdown (inferred from extension)
expose: 8080              # serve table + column charts at http://127.0.0.1:8080

Supported inputs

Out of the box (no extra dependencies): CSV/TSV, JSON, Markdown (pipe tables), HTML, plain text and common source files, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODT, EPUB, and ZIP archives (members parsed and merged). PDF text is available with the pdf extra; images need OCR (roadmap). Documents with tables yield those tables; documents that are prose yield a grounded element | text | location table so any readable file still produces a presentable result.

Architecture (layered)

The diagram is generated from docs/generate_architecture_diagram.py (PNG + SVG in docs/).

Layer summary

Key properties

• Local-first. Default runtime is a plain Python process — no daemon, no Linux VM. Docker is an optional backend.
• Privacy is explicit. Deterministic engine keeps data local; the LLM engine activates only when you add a key, with a consent notice before any data leaves.
• Trust travels with the data. Provenance and faithfulness survive every pipeline stage, from extraction through merge and redaction.

Documentation

Detailed design lives in the spec documents:

• Layer 1 engine — .kiro/specs/unstructured-to-tabular-etl/requirements.md
• Layer 2 runtime — .kiro/specs/locus-image-runtime/requirements.md
• Image catalog (planned images + build order) — .kiro/specs/locus-image-runtime/image-catalog.md
• Architecture & decision log — .kiro/specs/unstructured-to-tabular-etl/architecture-notes.md

Status

Layer 1 engine: feature-complete. Layer 2 runtime: feature-complete (all 12 build stages done). Raw corpus → validated, source-grounded table with cell-level provenance; a deterministic default engine and opt-in guardrailed LLM engine; cleaning/dedup; human-in-the-loop review; file/HTTP/REST/SQL connectors with CSV/PDF/HTML/records parsers and DataFrame/Parquet/SQL emitters. The locus CLI runs single images and multi-stage pipelines (typed DAG with static type-check + cross-stage provenance), builds/publishes/pulls images via a local registry, and serves a local result UI with the provenance viewer. 208 tests, CI on Python 3.11/3.12 (ruff + mypy strict + pytest).

pip install locus-etl        # CLI command is `locus`; extras: [pdf] [llm] [serve] [oci] ...
locus init                   # gitignore .env
locus catalog list           # see the official image catalog
locus run locusfile.yaml     # run a pipeline, get a grounded table
locus run locusfile.yaml --serve --port 8080   # preview UI with provenance
locus hub                    # browse the image catalog in a local web UI
locus build / push / pull / search / inspect   # image lifecycle

Remaining work is the official image catalog and a hub-side discovery index. The OCI/Harbor registry backend is implemented (OrasImageStore): set LOCUS_REGISTRY (and optionally LOCUS_NAMESPACE) to push/pull/inspect against Harbor, GHCR, ECR, or any OCI registry; otherwise a local filesystem registry is the zero-config default.

from locus_engine import (
    Pipeline, PipelineConfig, PluginRegistry,
    FileConnector, CsvParser, Connector, Parser, SourceRef,
)

registry = PluginRegistry()
registry.register(FileConnector(), Connector)
registry.register(CsvParser(), Parser)

config = PipelineConfig.load({"source": {"type": "files", "path": "./data"}})
pipeline = Pipeline(config, registry)

out = pipeline.run([SourceRef(uri="./data/invoices.csv", kind="file")])
frame = pipeline.emit(out)          # pandas DataFrame with a _lineage column
print(frame)

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT © 2026 Dibae101