Installation¶

This guide covers the different ways to install EmbedCache.

Using Cargo (Recommended)¶

The easiest way to install EmbedCache is using Cargo:

cargo install embedcache

This installs the embedcache binary to your Cargo bin directory.

Building from Source¶

To build from source:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/skelfresearch/embedcache.git
cd embedcache

# Build in release mode
cargo build --release

# The binary will be at target/release/embedcache

As a Library Dependency¶

To use EmbedCache as a library in your Rust project, add it to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
embedcache = "0.1.0"

Verifying Installation¶

After installation, verify it works:

# Check version
embedcache --version

# Start the server (will download models on first run)
embedcache

First Run

The first time you run EmbedCache, it will download the embedding models. This may take a few minutes depending on your internet connection.

System Requirements¶

Component	Requirement
OS	Linux, macOS, Windows
RAM	2GB minimum, 4GB recommended
Disk	500MB for models (varies by model)
Rust	1.70 or later

Optional: LLM Chunking¶

To use LLM-based chunking strategies, you'll need access to an LLM provider:

Ollama - Local LLM server (free, recommended for development)
OpenAI - OpenAI API access
Anthropic - Anthropic API access

See LLM Chunking for setup instructions.