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christopherkarani
Wax
Swift2026–2026
christopherkarani / Wax

Wax

Shared Single-file memory layer for all your agents, sub mili-second RAG over text, photo and video on Apple Silicon.. No Server. No API. One File. Pure Swift

5Distinct people
6Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
809GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Shared Single-file memory layer for all your agents, sub mili-second RAG over text, photo and video on Apple Silicon.. No Server. No API. One File. Pure Swift

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by 6-hour interval6 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2026-02-13 17:04:41 UTC to 2026-02-17 21:41:30 UTC.

01232026-02-13 12:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-13 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 commentsFeb 13, 12:002026-02-13 18:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-14 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-14 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-14 06:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-14 06:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-14 12:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-14 12:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-14 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-14 18:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-15 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-15 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-15 06:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-15 06:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-15 12:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-15 12:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-15 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsFeb 15, 12:002026-02-15 18:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-16 06:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-16 06:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-16 12:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-16 12:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-16 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-16 18:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-17 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-17 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-17 06:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-17 06:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-17 12:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-02-17 12:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-17 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2026-02-17 18:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-18 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 commentsFeb 17, 18:00

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Feb 13, 12:002026-02-13 12:00:00 UTC2026-02-13 18:00:00 UTC110
Feb 13, 18:002026-02-13 18:00:00 UTC2026-02-14 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 14, 00:002026-02-14 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-14 06:00:00 UTC000
Feb 14, 06:002026-02-14 06:00:00 UTC2026-02-14 12:00:00 UTC000
Feb 14, 12:002026-02-14 12:00:00 UTC2026-02-14 18:00:00 UTC000
Feb 14, 18:002026-02-14 18:00:00 UTC2026-02-15 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 15, 00:002026-02-15 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-15 06:00:00 UTC000
Feb 15, 06:002026-02-15 06:00:00 UTC2026-02-15 12:00:00 UTC000
Feb 15, 12:002026-02-15 12:00:00 UTC2026-02-15 18:00:00 UTC000
Feb 15, 18:002026-02-15 18:00:00 UTC2026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 16, 00:002026-02-16 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-16 06:00:00 UTC000
Feb 16, 06:002026-02-16 06:00:00 UTC2026-02-16 12:00:00 UTC000
Feb 16, 12:002026-02-16 12:00:00 UTC2026-02-16 18:00:00 UTC000
Feb 16, 18:002026-02-16 18:00:00 UTC2026-02-17 00:00:00 UTC000
Feb 17, 00:002026-02-17 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-17 06:00:00 UTC000
Feb 17, 06:002026-02-17 06:00:00 UTC2026-02-17 12:00:00 UTC000
Feb 17, 12:002026-02-17 12:00:00 UTC2026-02-17 18:00:00 UTC211
Feb 17, 18:002026-02-17 18:00:00 UTC2026-02-18 00:00:00 UTC303

What Hacker News says

6 sources
But it is not a layer on top of sqlite_vec, so your logic seems to be: If the tool uses sqlite_vec (which it doesn't) Then it should say so in the readme. You didn't find evidence sqlite_vec in the readme, so your conclusion was that it should be added. This is seemingly based off of your not liking the author mentioned that it would be the "sqlite of RAG" (which, notably, does not at all imply the use of sqlite, in fact, it suggests this is an alternative to sqlite). To address your other questions about if the file format is actually a sqlite database, the readme does address that: https://github.com/christopherkarani/Wax?tab=readme-ov-file#... The fact that the format is append-only seems to rule out that it is sqllite, but I could be wrong.
In Sub-Millisecond RAG on Apple Silicon. No Server. No API. One File
I built Wax because every RAG solution required either Pinecone/Weaviate in the cloud or ChromaDB/Qdrant running locally. I wanted the SQLite of RAG -- import a library, open a file, query. Except for multimodal content at GPU speed. The architecture that makes this work: Metal-accelerated vector search -- Embeddings live directly in unified memory (MTLBuffer). Zero CPU-GPU copy overhead. Adaptive SIMD4/SIMD8 kernels + GPU-side bitonic sort = sub-millisecond search on 10K+ vectors (vs ~100ms CPU). This isn't just "faster" -- it enables interactive search UX that wasn't possible before. Atomic single-file storage (.mv2s) -- Everything in one crash-safe binary: embeddings, BM25 index, metadata, compressed payloads. Dual-header writes with generation counters = kill -9 safe. Sync via iCloud, email it, commit to git. The file format is determ
Read the rest
inistic -- identical input produces byte-identical output. Query-adaptive hybrid fusion -- Four parallel search lanes (BM25, vector, timeline, structured memory). Lightweight classifier detects intent ("when did I..." → boost timeline, "find documentation about..." → boost BM25). Reciprocal Rank Fusion with deterministic tie-breaking = identical queries always return identical results. Photo/Video RAG -- Index your photo library with OCR, captions, GPS binning, per-region embeddings. Query "find that receipt from the restaurant" searches text, visual similarity, and location simultaneously. Videos get segmented with keyframe embeddings + transcript mapping. Results include timecodes for jump-to-moment navigation. All offline -- iCloud-only photos get metadata-only indexing. Swift 6.2 strict concurrency -- Every orchestrator is an actor. Thread safety proven at compile time, not runtime. Zero data races, zero @unchecked Sendable, zero escape hatches. Deterministic context assembly -- Same query + same data = byte-identical context every time. Three-tier surrogate compression (full/gist/micro) adapts based on memory age. Bundled cl100k_base tokenizer = no network, no nondeterminism. import Wax let brain = try await MemoryOrchestrator(at: URL(fileURLWithPath: "brain.mv2s")) // Index try await brain.remember("User prefers dark mode, gets headaches from bright screens") // Retrieve let context = try await brain.recall(query: "user display preferences") // Returns relevant memories with source attribution, ready for LLM context What makes this different: Zero dependencies on cloud infrastructure -- No API keys, no vendor lock-in, no telemetry Production-grade concurrency -- Not "it works in my tests," but compile-time proven thread safety Multimodal from the ground up -- Text, photos, videos indexed with shared semantics Performance that unlocks new UX -- Sub-millisecond latency enables real-time RAG workflows ## Wax Performance (Apple Silicon, as of Feb 17, 2026) - 0.84ms vector search at 10K docs (Metal, warm cache) - 9.2ms first-query after cold-open for vector search - ~125x faster than CPU (105ms) and ~178x faster than SQLite FTS5 (150ms) in the same 10K benchmark - 17ms cold-open → first query overall - 10K ingest in 7.756s (~1289 docs/s) with hybrid batched ingest - 0.103s hybrid search on 10K docs - Recall path: 0.101–0.103s (smoke/standard workloads) Built for: Developers shipping AI-native apps who want RAG without the infrastructure overhead. Your data stays local, your users stay private, your app stays fast. The storage format and search pipeline are stable. The API surface is early but functional. If you're building RAG into Swift apps, I'd love your feedback. GitHub: https://github.com/christopherkarani/Wax Star it if you're tired of spinning up vector databases for what should be a library call.
In Sub-Millisecond RAG on Apple Silicon. No Server. No API. One File

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