A lightweight local vector index for R. Store embeddings, search by similarity, filter by metadata. All without leaving your filesystem.
Built on USearch, one of the fastest approximate nearest neighbor libraries available.
# Install from CRAN
install.packages("usearchlite")
# Or install the development version from GitHub
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("aljrico/usearchlite")library(usearchlite)
# Create an index (vectors stored locally in a directory)
idx <- index_new(dim = 384L, path = "my_index")
# Add vectors with metadata (each vector is a numeric vector of length 384)
idx <- index_add(idx, id = 1L, vector = embedding1, meta = list(text = "First document", category = "A"))
idx <- index_add(idx, id = 2L, vector = embedding2, meta = list(text = "Second document", category = "B"))
idx <- index_add(idx, id = 3L, vector = embedding3, meta = list(text = "Third document", category = "A"))
# Search for nearest neighbors
results <- index_search(idx, query = query_embedding, k = 10L)
results$ids
#> [1] 3 1 2
# Filter by metadata (filtering happens in R, on the candidate set)
# prefilter_k controls how many candidates to fetch before filtering --
# set it higher than k to ensure enough results survive the filter
results <- index_search(
idx,
query = query_embedding,
k = 5L,
filter = function(m) m$category == "A",
prefilter_k = 50L
)Close R, come back later. Your index is still there:
idx <- index_new(dim = 384L, path = "my_index")
# Picks up where you left offSometimes you just need vector search without the infrastructure. No databases to configure, no services to run, no cloud dependencies. Just a directory on disk.
The API is intentionally minimal:
| Function | Purpose |
|---|---|
index_new() |
Create or load an index |
index_add() |
Add a vector with metadata |
index_search() |
Find nearest neighbors |
index_meta() |
Retrieve all metadata |
Filtering is handled in R rather than C++. This keeps the core simple while giving you full flexibility: use any R expression to filter your results.
MIT. Vendored USearch code is Apache-2.0 licensed (see
inst/COPYRIGHTS).