Install

Six ways in. Pick one, run two commands, you have a semantic index.

Every install method ships the same binary. ONNX Runtime is bundled. No system dependencies beyond a recent OS.

npm install -g stratafs
stratafs config init
stratafs serve

macOS · Linux · Windows

After installing

Two commands and you're indexing:

stratafs config init                 # writes ~/.stratafs/config.toml
stratafs serve                       # REST on :8080, MCP on :8081

By default the config indexes ~/Documents. Edit config.toml to add S3, GCS, Azure, SharePoint, Drive, or Jira sources — see the storage page for examples.

System requirements

macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon or Intel)
Linux kernel 5.4+ (glibc 2.31+ or musl)
Windows 10/11 (x64)
Memory: 500 MB baseline + ~500 MB for the default embedding model (BGE Base). Swap to BGE Small (~250 MB) for tighter machines.
Disk: roughly 1.5–2× the original text size of indexed content, with compression on by default.

Native installers

For end users who don't want a package manager, signed installers ship on every release:

macOS: signed and notarized .pkg + DMG
Linux: .deb package + AppImage
Windows: NSIS installer + portable ZIP

Run as a service

systemd (Linux)

systemctl --user enable --now stratafs.service

launchd (macOS)

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.neullabs.stratafs.plist

Windows service

The native installer registers a Windows Service named StrataFS. Use services.msc or sc.exe to manage it.

Docker / Kubernetes

docker run -d \
  --name stratafs \
  -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 \
  -v $HOME/data:/data \
  -v $HOME/.stratafs:/state \
  ghcr.io/neul-labs/stratafs:latest

The image is multi-arch (amd64, arm64). Mount your data into /data and the state directory into /state. For Kubernetes, use a ConfigMap for config.toml and a PVC for /state.

From source

git clone https://github.com/neul-labs/stratafs.git
cd stratafs
make build       # uses -tags "fts5" under the hood
./build/stratafs serve

Requires Go 1.21+ and ONNX Runtime (the Makefile downloads the right version for your platform on first build).

Upgrading

All install methods upgrade in place. The schema migrates forward automatically; downgrades aren't supported but you can blow away ~/.stratafs and re-index.

Index your storage. Search it like a human.

Install StrataFS. Point it at a directory or a bucket. Hit /search.

GitHub releases → Read the architecture