rawq

Context retrieval engine for AI agents.

Semantic + lexical search over codebases. Single Rust binary. Fully offline. Built for AI agents.

Why

AI agents waste tokens reading irrelevant files. rawq returns only the relevant code — with file paths, line ranges, scope names, and confidence scores. Searching a 10k-file codebase yields 5-10 relevant chunks instead of 50+ full files.

Install

Quick install (prebuilt binary, auto-adds to PATH):

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/auyelbekov/rawq/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/auyelbekov/rawq/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex"

Or download manually from GitHub Releases.

Cargo (requires Rust toolchain):

cargo install rawq

GPU acceleration — prebuilt binaries include GPU support. For cargo installs, enable with feature flags:

cargo install rawq --features directml   # Windows (DirectML)
cargo install rawq --features cuda       # Linux (CUDA)
cargo install rawq --features coreml     # macOS (CoreML)

Build from source:

git clone https://github.com/auyelbekov/rawq.git
cd rawq
cargo build --release --features directml   # or cuda / coreml

Quick start

# Search a codebase (auto-downloads snowflake-arctic-embed-s + indexes on first run)
rawq "database connection retry" ./src

# Structured JSON output
rawq search "database connection retry" ./src --json

# Lexical BM25 only
rawq search -e "reconnect" ./src

# Semantic only
rawq search -s "how does retry logic work" ./src

Search output

src/db/connection.py:23-41  [91%]  DatabaseClient.reconnect
   23 | def reconnect(self, max_retries=3):
   24 |     """Attempt to re-establish database connection"""
   25 |     for attempt in range(max_retries):

With --json:

{
  "schema_version": 1,
  "model": "snowflake-arctic-embed-s",
  "results": [
    {
      "file": "src/db/connection.py",
      "lines": [23, 41],
      "display_start_line": 23,
      "language": "python",
      "scope": "DatabaseClient.reconnect",
      "confidence": 0.91,
      "content": "def reconnect(self, max_retries=3): ...",
      "token_count": 45,
      "matched_lines": [23]
    }
  ],
  "query_ms": 8,
  "total_tokens": 45
}

Features

• Hybrid search — RRF-fused semantic (ONNX embeddings) + lexical (tantivy BM25) with adaptive query weighting
• 16 languages — tree-sitter AST chunking for Rust, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go, Java, C, C++, C#, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Bash, Lua, Scala, Dart
• Universal fallback — any text file automatically indexed with its real extension as the language label (.sql, .yaml, .proto, .tf, etc.)
• Incremental indexing — SHA-256 per chunk, git-aware change detection, sub-second re-index
• Fully offline — ONNX Runtime inference, no network calls after initial model download
• Agent-friendly — --json, --stream (NDJSON), --token-budget, exit codes (0=found, 1=none, 2=error)
• GPU acceleration — auto-detects best GPU and computes batch sizes from actual VRAM. DirectML, CUDA, CoreML with automatic CPU fallback
• Daemon mode — holds ONNX model hot in background, auto-starts on first search, auto-exits after 30min idle
• Diff-scoped search — rawq diff "query" searches only within the current git diff
• Re-ranking — --rerank applies keyword overlap heuristic for two-pass result ordering
• Codebase map — rawq map shows AST-based structure with real hierarchy (impl > methods)
• Terminal UX — syntax highlighting via bat, paged output, context lines around matches

Commands

rawq "query" [path]                     # Search (default)
rawq search "query" [path]              # Search with options
rawq search "query" [path] --json       # JSON output
rawq search "query" [path] --stream     # NDJSON streaming
rawq search "query" [path] --rerank     # Two-pass re-ranking
rawq search "query" [path] --context 5  # 5 context lines
rawq search "query" [path] --full-file  # Full file content
rawq index build [path]                 # Build index explicitly
rawq index build --reindex [path]       # Force full re-index
rawq index status [path]                # Show index stats
rawq index remove [path]               # Remove index
rawq diff "query" [path]               # Search within git diff
rawq map [path]                         # Show codebase structure
rawq watch [path]                       # Auto-re-index on changes
rawq model download [name]             # Download a model
rawq model list                         # List available models
rawq embed "text"                       # Generate embedding vector
rawq daemon status                      # Check daemon status
rawq daemon stop                        # Stop daemon

Models

rawq auto-downloads the default model on first use. Available models:

Model	Dimensions	Sequence Length	Notes
snowflake-arctic-embed-s	384	512	Default. Small, fast.
snowflake-arctic-embed-m-v1.5	768	512	Recommended. Better quality.
jina-embeddings-v2-base-code	768	8192	Code-specialized, long context.

Switch models with rawq model download <name> and rawq model default <name>.

Environment variables

Variable	Description
RAWQ_MODEL	Override default model
RAWQ_NO_GPU	Force CPU mode (=1)
RAWQ_NO_DAEMON	Disable daemon (=1)
RAWQ_NO_BAT	Disable syntax highlighting (=1)
RAWQ_NO_PAGER	Disable paged output (=1)
RAWQ_OFFLINE	Skip network calls (=1)
RAWQ_DML_DEVICE	DirectML device index
RAWQ_CUDA_DEVICE	CUDA device index
RAWQ_VRAM_BUDGET	Override VRAM budget (bytes)

AI agent usage

Set SKILL.md as context for your AI agent to teach it how to use rawq effectively — query strategies, filtering options, and common patterns.

License

MIT