Pixeltable Cloud is in Limited Beta. Email contact@pixeltable.com if you are interested.
The unified multimodal backend agents build with
Quickstart | Documentation | CLI | Cloud | Discord
Install into your agent: Agent Skill · MCP server · Cursor plugin · ChatGPT plugin
Reading this as an agent? Start at get-started.md, then skill.md and llms-full.txt.
Pixeltable is the database, orchestration, and serving layers. Images, video, audio, and documents live in tables. A transform is a computed column. An index is a declaration, and so is an HTTP route. Insert a row and everything below it runs. Object storage, a vector database, an orchestrator, and the endpoint code that copies between them collapse into one application file. That file is what a coding agent can hold: it writes the whole application at once, and you review the change in one diff instead of across four systems.
pip install 'pixeltable[serve]'
pxt init
pxt service example --out app.py
pxt schema update app.py my_app
pxt service update app.py my_app
pxt schema update creates the catalog my_app and its tables; it does not start HTTP.
pxt service update starts HTTP; it does not create tables.
pxt service example writes this application file.
import pixeltable as pxt
import pixeltable.functions as pxtf
from pixeltable.serving import FastAPIRouter
TableModel = pxt.model_base()
@pxt.udf # a Python function the columns below can call
def excerpt(text: str, n: int = 12) -> str:
return text if len(text) <= n else f'{text[:n]}...'
class Docs(TableModel, name='docs'):
id = pxt.Column(value=pxtf.uuid.uuid7(), primary_key=True) # a generated key: provided automatically on insert
title: pxt.String
body: pxt.String | None
title_upper = pxtf.string.upper(title) # an assignment: computed on insert and on update
summary = excerpt(title) # a computed column over a udf this file defines
ingest = FastAPIRouter(name='ingest')
ingest.add_insert_route( # POST /docs inserts and returns the computed columns
Docs, path='/docs', inputs=[Docs.title, Docs.body], outputs=[Docs.id, Docs.title_upper, Docs.summary]
)
ingest.add_update_route( # POST /docs/update takes id plus the new values
Docs, path='/docs/update', inputs=[Docs.title], outputs=[Docs.id, Docs.title_upper]
)
ingest.add_compute_route(Docs, path='/titles', inputs=[Docs.title], outputs=[Docs.title_upper])
The same file holds pxt.Image, pxt.Video, pxt.Audio, or pxt.Document columns, and a
computed column over one of them is another assignment:
media pipelines,
RAG. The port is assigned, so read it
back rather than hardcoding it:
URL=$(pxt service list --json | jq -r '.[0].endpoint')
curl -X POST "$URL/docs" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"title": "Hello", "body": "world"}'
# {"id":"...","title_upper":"HELLO","summary":"Hello"}
The same file runs on Pixeltable Cloud. Create an API key in the Cloud dashboard, set PIXELTABLE_API_KEY, name the database in pixeltable.toml, then target it by URI. pxt db update creates or updates the hosted database; it does not insert rows. pxt service run is local only and cannot target Cloud.
pxt db update pxt://org:mydb
pxt schema update app.py pxt://org:mydb
pxt service update app.py pxt://org:mydb
A @pxt.udf in that same app.py is in the image pxt db update builds.
Chat agent or video search
uvx pixeltable-new copies one app from the starter kit. The default copy is a chat app; pass agent as the last argument to pxt schema update. --video copies video search; pass videointel.
uvx pixeltable-new myapp
cd myapp
uv sync
pxt schema update app.py agent
pxt service update app.py agent
Inserting into the knowledge table needs no API key. The /ask route needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.
To mount the routes on an existing FastAPI app, app.include_router(...). HTTP serving. To skip endpoints, run pxt schema update, insert from Python, then export_sql. Self-hosting.
Coding agents
The links above install the skill and MCP. How the skill writes app.py: AI coding agents.
npx skills add pixeltable/pixeltable-skill
The skill writes a TableModel in app.py. If the agent writes create_table in application code, names the file schema.py, or writes the removed command pxt serve, the installed skill is stale: reinstall npx skills add pixeltable/pixeltable-skill.
Notebooks and tests still use pxt.create_table(). An app puts tables in app.py and creates them with pxt schema update.
License
Apache 2.0. Contributing · Discord
2 maintainers
Release files for pixeltable 0.7.8
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pixeltable-0.7.8-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Release files / pixeltable-0.7.8-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | pixeltable-0.7.8-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 1.3 MB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
4b6a4faf1e634a22e842da15802f768e9117dd1904a8b896b06f750232af4435
|
|
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums |
72b72280764e0f6f68964827a077850dce2f453da520c7ff1f948381d863e848
|
| Upload date | |
|
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing? |
No |
| Uploaded via |
uv/0.12.3 {"installer":{"name":"uv","version":"0.12.3","subcommand":["publish"]},"python":null,"implementation":{"name":null,"version":null},"distro":{"name":"macOS","version":null,"id":null,"libc":null},"system":{"name":null,"release":null},"cpu":null,"openssl_version":null,"setuptools_version":null,"rustc_version":null,"ci":null}
|
