Vectoria

Embedded hybrid search engine for ecommerce. Single binary, no external services required.

Vectoria combines BM25 full-text search with vector similarity and behavioral signals (clicks, purchases, views). Its main advantage over BM25-only search (SQLite FTS5, Meilisearch basic tier) is zero-result elimination: semantic mode returns results for long-tail queries that share no keywords with any product. Hybrid mode keeps BM25 precision while removing zero results entirely.

The embedding model runs locally via ONNX; no external API calls required unless you configure an OpenAI-compatible provider.

Designed for catalogs up to ~500K products on a single node.

Requirements

• Rust 1.80+ (for building from source)
• ~40 MB disk space for the default embedding model (downloaded on first run)

Getting started

git clone https://github.com/yourorg/vectoria
cd vectoria
cargo build --release

Start the server:

./target/release/vectoria-server

On first run, it downloads the multilingual-e5-small embedding model (~40 MB) and prints an API key:

INFO vectoria v0.1.2
INFO api_key: a1b2c3d4e5f6...
INFO listening on http://0.0.0.0:7700

Index a product:

curl -X POST http://localhost:7700/products \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"id":"p1","text":"Nike Air Max running shoe lightweight","metadata":{"title":"Nike Air Max","brand":"Nike","price":120}}'

Search:

curl -X POST http://localhost:7700/search \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"running shoes","limit":10}'

Configuration

Place a vectoria.toml in the working directory. All fields are optional.

[server]
host = "0.0.0.0"
port = 7700
api_key = "your-key"        # auto-generated if absent

[storage]
path = "./vectoria.db"      # path for persistent index files

[embedding]
provider = "local"          # "local" | "openai-compatible"
model = "multilingual-e5-small"

[index]
vector_backend = "edgestore-hnsw"   # see below

[ranking]
semantic    = 0.6
popularity  = 0.2
availability = 0.1
margin      = 0.1

vector_backend options:

• edgestore-hnsw — persistent HNSW index (activated after POST /admin/reindex), recommended for production
• sqlite — SQLite metadata + EdgeStore flat vector index
• memory — everything in-memory, lost on restart (development only)

Environment variable overrides (take precedence over vectoria.toml):

VECTORIA_HOST
VECTORIA_PORT
VECTORIA_API_KEY
VECTORIA_STORAGE_PATH
VECTORIA_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER
VECTORIA_EMBEDDING_BASE_URL
VECTORIA_EMBEDDING_MODEL
VECTORIA_CONFIG              # path to config file, default: vectoria.toml
VECTORIA_SKIP_CONSENT=1      # skip model download prompt
VECTORIA_ENABLE_RERANKER=1   # enable cross-encoder reranking (slower, higher quality)

CLI

The vectoria CLI handles bulk operations against a running server.

# Bulk import from NDJSON, CSV, or Parquet
vectoria import products.ndjson --server http://localhost:7700 --api-key <key>

# Re-embed all products after a model change
vectoria reindex --server http://localhost:7700 --api-key <key>

# Benchmark search quality (Recall@K, NDCG@K, MRR) across all modes
vectoria bench judges.ndjson --mode all --server http://localhost:7700 --api-key <key>

Embedded usage (Rust)

Add vectoria-core to your Cargo.toml:

vectoria-core = "0.1.2"

Async (with Tokio):

use vectoria_core::{SearchEngineBuilder, model::{SearchRequest, SearchMode}};

let engine = SearchEngineBuilder::new()
    .query_cache(300, 1_000)
    .build()
    .await?;

engine.index(product).await?;

let results = engine.search(SearchRequest {
    q: "running shoes".into(),
    mode: SearchMode::Hybrid,
    limit: 10,
    ..Default::default()
}).await?;

Sync (no Tokio required in caller):

use vectoria_core::{SearchEngineSync, model::{SearchRequest, SearchMode}};

let engine = SearchEngineSync::new()?;

let results = engine.search(SearchRequest {
    q: "running shoes".into(),
    ..Default::default()
})?;

SearchEngineBuilder accepts optional overrides for storage backend, vector index, embedding provider, ranking weights, query cache TTL/size, and cross-encoder reranking. All default to in-memory storage and the local multilingual-e5-small ONNX model.

Preloading an existing database — pass a persistent backend pointing to an existing file, then call reindex_all() to rebuild the BM25 index and spell corrector from stored products:

use std::{path::Path, sync::Arc};
use vectoria_core::{SearchEngineBuilder, storage::sqlite::SqliteStorage};

let engine = SearchEngineBuilder::new()
    .storage(Arc::new(SqliteStorage::open(Path::new("./vectoria.db"))?))
    .build()
    .await?;

engine.reindex_all().await?;  // rebuild BM25 + spell corrector

Bulk indexing — call engine.index() in a loop. If products already have vectors, set product.vector to skip the embedding step. Call reindex_all() once after bulk loading to flush the HNSW graph.

Publish target: make publish (requires cargo login or CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN). See crates.io/crates/vectoria-core.

Demo webstore

The fastest way to try Vectoria with real data is the Make-based demo. It uses the Amazon ESCI product catalog — a separate license agreement is required: https://github.com/amazon-science/esci-data

make server-bg      # start server in background (waits until healthy)
make esci-import    # download ESCI data and import 5000 products (~5 min first run)
make webstore       # serve demo store at http://localhost:8080

To benchmark after importing:

make esci-judges    # build judged query dataset
make bench          # Recall@K / NDCG@K / MRR across bm25 / semantic / hybrid

Run make help for all targets and overridable variables. See docs/quickstart.md for a full walkthrough.

Benchmark

Amazon ESCI dataset, 5000 US products, multilingual-e5-small embedding. Results by label hardness:

ESCI label meanings: E = exact product name match (BM25-optimal), S = substitute/concept (keyword overlap low), C = complement (e.g. query "camera" → relevant product "camera bag").

Key takeaways:

• 100% coverage across all modes and label sets — zero-result queries handled by spell-correction fallback (compound split + typo correction applied only when BM25 returns no results)
• Hybrid ≈ BM25 on exact queries, with coverage maintained by semantic fallback
• Semantic covers zero-keyword queries that BM25 would miss entirely (S and C labels)
• Semantic p50 latency: 2ms (cached embeddings); BM25/hybrid: sub-ms to ~3ms

Reproduce with custom label sets:

make esci-import                                  # import 5000 US products
make esci-judges                                  # default: E+S labels
# Or choose label set:
cargo run --example esci_import -p vectoria-cli -- \
  data/esci/shopping_queries_dataset_products.parquet \
  data/esci/shopping_queries_dataset_examples.parquet \
  --judges data/esci/judges.ndjson --labels E,S,C --locale us \
  --max-products 5000 --server http://localhost:7700 --api-key <key>
make bench

Next benchmark target: WANDS (Wayfair) — 42K furniture/home goods products, complex descriptive concept queries ("mid century modern floor lamp"). Expected to show larger hybrid advantage since Wayfair queries are more concept-driven than ESCI exact matches.

API reference

See docs/api.md.

Docker

Quickest start — Docker Compose (builds image, mounts volumes, sets API key):

VECTORIA_API_KEY=my-secret-key docker compose up

Or build and run manually:

# Full image — ONNX model downloaded on first start (~400 MB image, ~40 MB model cache)
docker build --target vectoria-full -t vectoria:full .
docker run -p 7700:7700 \
  -v vectoria-data:/data \
  -v fastembed-cache:/root/.cache/fastembed \
  -e VECTORIA_API_KEY=my-secret-key \
  vectoria:full

# Slim image — requires OpenAI-compatible embedding provider (~50 MB)
docker build --target vectoria-slim -t vectoria:slim .
docker run -p 7700:7700 \
  -v vectoria-data:/data \
  -e VECTORIA_API_KEY=my-secret-key \
  -e VECTORIA_EMBEDDING_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1 \
  -e VECTORIA_EMBEDDING_MODEL=text-embedding-3-small \
  vectoria:slim

Both images include the vectoria CLI. Run it against the container:

docker exec vectoria-vectoria-1 vectoria --server http://localhost:7700 --api-key my-secret-key stats

Volumes:

• /data — persistent index and SQLite storage
• /root/.cache/fastembed — ONNX model cache (full image only; mount to avoid re-downloading)

Building from source

cargo build --release               # server + CLI
cargo test                          # integration tests (no mocks)
cargo build --release -p vectoria-server
cargo build --release -p vectoria-cli