# Show HN: Local-first semantic knowledge graph with magnetic-pull retrieval

> Source: <https://github.com/Astralchemist/rig>
> Published: 2026-05-29 13:31:01+00:00

**Watch your codebase become a constellation — and give your AI agent a map of it.**

[
](https://github.com/Astralchemist/rig/releases/download/v0.1.0/demo.mp4)

[▶ Watch the full demo with audio](https://github.com/Astralchemist/rig/releases/download/v0.1.0/demo.mp4)

Rig builds a local-first semantic knowledge graph of your project, renders it as an interactive map you can fly through, and exposes it to coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, …) over MCP. Your agent stops grepping blindly and starts navigating — by structure, by meaning, and by what it's touched before.

Everything runs on your machine. No API key, no upload, nothing leaves your laptop.

In any project directory:

```
npx rig-constellation
```

(Have [Bun](https://bun.sh)? `bunx rig-constellation`

works too.) That's the whole thing. One command:

```
  ⬡ Rig — mapping my-project
  http://localhost:7491

  ✓ initialized  ./.rig
  ✓ map live    http://localhost:7491
  → 1/6 extract      ██████████████████ 212/212
  → 5/6 hubness      ████████████████░░
  ✓ indexed     1,204 nodes · 3,891 edges · 212 files · 36 skills
  ✓ wired       claude

  press Ctrl-C to stop the map.
```

It initializes `.rig/`

, opens the live map **first**, then indexes your code so the
graph assembles in the already-open browser tab in real time, and wires up whichever
agent it detects. The map title and port are derived per project, so two checkouts can
run side by side on stable, distinct ports. Re-run any time, or use the explicit
subcommands below.

The command is

`rig`

(alias:`rig-constellation`

). Prefer a global install?`npm i -g rig-constellation`

(or`bun install -g rig-constellation`

), then`rig start`

. Installed locally with`npm i rig-constellation`

? The binary lives in`node_modules/.bin`

— run it with`npx rig start`

(or install with`-g`

to get`rig`

on your`PATH`

).

**A map of your codebase.** Files, symbols, calls, imports, and dependencies as a navigable graph — not a file tree.**Magnetic pull.** Ask "what's related to X" and get a ranked answer that blends graph distance, semantic similarity, and what's been active recently.**Hubs.** The structurally important anchors surface first, so a 5k-node graph stays legible.**Dependency intelligence.**"What version of X do I have?" and "what's declared but never imported?" become one-hop graph queries.** Waypoints.**Your agent drops durable markers at decisions and constraints that survive context-window compaction — so a new session picks up oriented.**An MCP tool surface** your agent calls directly: search, pull, callers/callees, impact, hubs, deps, and more.

Without a map, an agent answers *"what breaks if I change parseConfig?"* by grepping the string and reading whatever files match — blind, lossy, and token-expensive.

With Rig it's one call:

```
rig_impact parseConfig
→ 7 transitive callers, ranked:
   loadSettings          calls · depth 1
   bootstrap             calls · depth 2
   __tests__/config…     tests · depth 1
   …
```

And *"what else should I look at?"* isn't a guess — `rig_pull`

returns related anchors scored by graph distance, on-device embedding similarity, and recent activity, with the three components broken out so the ranking is **explainable, not a black box**:

```
rig_pull parseConfig
→ { node: "validateSchema", score: 0.81,
    components: { structural: 0.4, semantic: 0.9, recency: 0.7 } }
```

That ranked, self-explaining retrieval — not a flat grep dump — is the difference.

- Embeddings run locally via a small on-device model (
`bge-small`

).**No API key required.** - The graph lives in
`.rig/rig.db`

in your project.`rig`

auto-adds`.rig/`

to your`.gitignore`

. - Nothing is uploaded. The map UI is served on loopback only.

`bunx rig-constellation`

auto-detects and wires the agents you have installed. To wire one explicitly:

```
rig install claude      # also: cursor · codex · opencode · openrouter
```

This merges Rig's MCP server into the agent's config; the agent spawns `rig serve --mcp`

on demand.

| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
`rig start` |
One-shot: init + index + wire agent + open the live map |
`rig index` |
Extract + write nodes (`--include` / `--exclude <glob>` ) |
`rig sync` |
Incremental update |
`rig query` |
CLI search |
`rig serve --all` |
Start MCP and/or the web map (`--mcp` / `--web` / `--auth` ) |
`rig status` |
Index health |
`rig doctor` |
Diagnose environment, db, model cache, agent configs |
`rig export-docs` |
Render waypoints into a markdown doc tree |

Run `rig --help`

for the full list.

`.contracts/`

is the declarative source of truth (tools, anchors, migrations, events); `bun run gen`

emits the matching code into `generated/`

. The graph is plain SQLite. Retrieval is a single magnetic-pull scoring function over structural edges, on-device embeddings, and recency. The map UI is a force-graph over WebSocket.

`packages/core`

— the`Rig`

class: DB, extraction, graph, embeddings, magnetic pull`packages/mcp`

— MCP stdio server + tool dispatch`packages/web`

— Fastify + WebSocket + React map UI`packages/cli`

— the`rig`

binary`packages/contracts`

—`defineToolContract`

& friends

See [ docs/contracts.md](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/docs/contracts.md) to add a tool,

[for the architecture, and](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/docs/integration.md)

`docs/integration.md`

[for the stability promise.](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/COMPATIBILITY.md)

`COMPATIBILITY.md`

[Bun](https://bun.sh)≥ 1.1 (primary), or Node ≥ 20 (fallback).- Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Adding a tool means touching one file in `.contracts/`

and one implementation — the generator wires the rest. Start with [ docs/contracts.md](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/docs/contracts.md), then

[for where new ideas plug in. Stable tools are protected by a compatibility gate (](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/docs/integration.md)

`docs/integration.md`

`bun run check:compat`

); see [.](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/COMPATIBILITY.md)

`COMPATIBILITY.md`

[Apache-2.0](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/LICENSE). Rig's extraction layer is derived from [CodeGraph](https://github.com/colbymchenry/codegraph) (MIT, © Colby Mchenry); those portions remain under their original MIT terms — see [ LICENSE-CODEGRAPH.txt](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/LICENSE-CODEGRAPH.txt) and

[. With thanks.](/Astralchemist/rig/blob/main/NOTICE)

`NOTICE`