A lightweight Knowledge Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation system with multiple LLM backend support.
- Python 3.10+
- Git
- Docker (optional for Docker deployment)
- Clone the repository:
# Linux/MacOS
git clone https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG.git
cd LightRAG
# Windows PowerShell
git clone https://github.com/HKUDS/LightRAG.git
cd LightRAG
- Configure your environment:
# Linux/MacOS
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your preferred configuration
# Windows PowerShell
Copy-Item .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your preferred configuration
- Create and activate virtual environment:
# Linux/MacOS
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
# Windows PowerShell
python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\Activate
- Install dependencies:
# Both platforms
pip install -r requirements.txt
Docker instructions work the same on all platforms with Docker Desktop installed.
- Build and start the container:
docker-compose up -d
LightRAG can be configured using environment variables in the .env
file:
HOST
: Server host (default: 0.0.0.0)PORT
: Server port (default: 9621)
LLM_BINDING
: LLM backend to use (lollms/ollama/openai)LLM_BINDING_HOST
: LLM server host URLLLM_MODEL
: Model name to use
EMBEDDING_BINDING
: Embedding backend (lollms/ollama/openai)EMBEDDING_BINDING_HOST
: Embedding server host URLEMBEDDING_MODEL
: Embedding model name
MAX_ASYNC
: Maximum async operationsMAX_TOKENS
: Maximum token sizeEMBEDDING_DIM
: Embedding dimensionsMAX_EMBED_TOKENS
: Maximum embedding token size
LIGHTRAG_API_KEY
: API key for authentication
The system uses the following paths for data storage:
data/
├── rag_storage/ # RAG data persistence
└── inputs/ # Input documents
- Using with Ollama:
LLM_BINDING=ollama
LLM_BINDING_HOST=http://host.docker.internal:11434
LLM_MODEL=mistral
EMBEDDING_BINDING=ollama
EMBEDDING_BINDING_HOST=http://host.docker.internal:11434
EMBEDDING_MODEL=bge-m3
you can't just use localhost from docker, that's why you need to use host.docker.internal which is defined in the docker compose file and should allow you to access the localhost services.
- Using with OpenAI:
LLM_BINDING=openai
LLM_MODEL=gpt-3.5-turbo
EMBEDDING_BINDING=openai
EMBEDDING_MODEL=text-embedding-ada-002
OPENAI_API_KEY=your-api-key
Once deployed, you can interact with the API at http://localhost:9621
Example query using PowerShell:
$headers = @{
"X-API-Key" = "your-api-key"
"Content-Type" = "application/json"
}
$body = @{
query = "your question here"
} | ConvertTo-Json
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "http://localhost:9621/query" -Method Post -Headers $headers -Body $body
Example query using curl:
curl -X POST "http://localhost:9621/query" \
-H "X-API-Key: your-api-key" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"query": "your question here"}'
Remember to:
- Set a strong API key in production
- Use SSL in production environments
- Configure proper network security
To update the Docker container:
docker-compose pull
docker-compose up -d --build
To update native installation:
# Linux/MacOS
git pull
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
# Windows PowerShell
git pull
.\venv\Scripts\Activate
pip install -r requirements.txt