Show HN: Repo2vec – an open-source library for chatting with any codebase
repo2vec is a modular library that facilitates chat-based interaction with codebases, offering easy setup, customization, and a Retrieval-Augmented Generation approach for queries, with free hosting for selected repositories.
Read original articlerepo2vec is a modular library designed to facilitate interaction with public and private codebases through a chat interface. Its primary purpose is to help users understand and integrate with codebases without the need for extensive manual code review, functioning similarly to GitHub Copilot but focused on providing up-to-date information about specific repositories. The library features an easy setup process that requires running just two scripts, and it ensures that responses are documented with references to relevant code sections, enhancing the reliability of the AI's answers. Users can customize the library by swapping components in the pipeline for tailored improvements. The setup involves installing dependencies, exporting necessary environment variables, and running indexing and chat scripts, which index the codebase in a vector database and launch a Gradio app for user interaction. The indexing process includes cloning the repository, processing files, embedding chunks using OpenAI's API, and storing these embeddings in a vector store, typically Pinecone. The chat interface employs a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach to answer user queries based on the indexed code. Additionally, the developers offer free hosting for selected repositories, providing dedicated URLs for easy access. Contributions and feature requests are encouraged, and the code's modularity allows for integration with various embeddings, LLMs, and vector store providers.
- repo2vec enables chat-based interaction with codebases.
- The library is easy to set up and customize.
- It uses a Retrieval-Augmented Generation approach for answering queries.
- Free hosting is available for selected repositories.
- Contributions to the project are welcomed.
- Users express excitement about the potential of repo2vec and its chat-based interaction with codebases.
- Several questions arise regarding the integration of documentation and support for multiple programming languages.
- Concerns about privacy and the handling of private repositories are raised.
- Users inquire about the choice of embeddings and the efficiency of handling large repositories.
- There is interest in using local LLMs and the underlying technology powering the library.
I would also like to be able to have the LLM know all of the documentation for any dependencies in the same way.
So far two similar solutions I tested crapped out on non-ASCII characters. Because Python's UTF-8 decoder is quite strict about it.