Heimgeist is a local desktop chat client for Ollama. It combines an Electron + React renderer with a FastAPI backend, stores chat history in SQLite, supports optional SearXNG-backed web search, and can enrich prompts with context from local library indexes.

Features

Local desktop chat UI with Electron
Ollama-backed chat with streaming and non-streaming replies
Persistent chat sessions and automatic title generation
Edit-and-regenerate flow for earlier user messages
Optional web search enrichment with source chips
Local library management for RAG-style prompt enrichment
Theme selection and UI scale controls

Local Libraries

The DBs tab is no longer a placeholder. You can:

create and rename libraries
register files and folders
build, enrich, and index library content
mark one library as active for chat context
open or remove registered files from the UI

When a chat library is active, Heimgeist queries it before sending a message and appends the returned context block to the prompt.

Stack

Frontend: Electron, React, Vite
Backend: FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, SQLite
Search enrichment: SearXNG + page fetching/reranking
Local RAG pipeline: corpus build, enrichment, embedding, and retrieval helpers under backend/rag/

Development

Requirements:

Node.js 18+
Python 3.13
Ollama running locally
Optional: SearXNG on http://localhost:8888

Quick start:

./run.sh

This creates or refreshes backend/.venv, installs Python dependencies, installs npm dependencies, and starts the dev stack.

Manual startup:

python3.13 -m venv backend/.venv
backend/.venv/bin/python -m pip install -r backend/requirements.txt
npm install
npm run dev

Project Layout

.
├── backend/
│   ├── main.py
│   ├── local_rag.py
│   ├── rag/
│   ├── websearch.py
│   ├── ollama_client.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── database.py
│   ├── schemas.py
│   └── requirements.txt
├── electron/
│   ├── main.cjs
│   └── preload.cjs
├── src/
│   ├── App.jsx
│   ├── LibraryManager.jsx
│   ├── GeneralSettings.jsx
│   ├── InterfaceSettings.jsx
│   ├── WebsearchSettings.jsx
│   ├── markdown.js
│   ├── colorSchemes.js
│   └── styles.css
├── package.json
├── run.sh
└── vite.config.js