I built a plug-and-play, portable RAG system for local codebases.
I’ve been building something called Spectrum, and the idea is pretty simple:
repo/folder -> .specpack -> local HTTP API -> agent-ready search + context
With so many people vibe coding but without much knowledge of how RAG works, RAG can be overwhelming to setup and maintain. So I have gone down a GUI route (there's CLI and API too) to make it work alongside apps like Codex and Claude.
Spectrum takes a project folder or repo, packs it into a portable .specpack, builds a lightweight retrieval index, and serves it locally over HTTP so agents and tools can actually search and read the project context properly.
Basically: instead of wiring up a vector DB, cloud service, random chunk folders, loose indexes, and whatever other goblin machinery usually appears the second you say “RAG”, you get one portable project context bundle.
The goal is:
- pack a project into one file
- move that file between machines easily
- serve it locally
- allow for additional corpuses to be added to the live server and index on the fly
- let agents search, hydrate, and read the actual project context
- keep code, docs, notes, config, and ops stuff together
- avoid depending on cloud services just to give an agent memory of a repo
Current flow looks like this:
spectrum load ./my-repo ./my-repo.specpack
spectrum serve ./my-repo.specpack --port 7777
Then agents/tools can hit endpoints like:
GET /projects/repo/context
POST /packs/repo/search
GET /packs/repo/documents/{path}
I’m not trying to replace full vector databases.
It’s more like a portable project briefcase for agents: one file that carries the project context, retrieval index, and document hydration with it.
The bit I’m especially interested in is portability. A .specpack can be copied between devices, stored with a project, passed to another machine, or used as a local memory/context layer without rebuilding a whole RAG setup every time.
I’m also working on encrypted .specpack support, so the model becomes:
locked .specpack at rest
unlock once locally with a password
agents use the fast local API
So you can have portable project memory that is local-first, easy to move around, and password-protected when not in use.
Would genuinely love feedback from anyone working with local codebase RAG, agent context, repo memory, or dev-tool workflows.
The links for github and the GUI apps are available at https://bytespectrum.cc/
Especially interested in whether this solves a real pain point for people, or whether I’ve just built a very fancy briefcase for myself.