Installation¶

Prerequisites¶

Python 3.10 or newer. Verify with python --version. If the command is missing or the version is below 3.10, install Python from https://www.python.org/downloads/. On Windows, enable Add python.exe to PATH during install.
pip ships with modern Python. Verify with python -m pip --version.

Supported platforms¶

Platform	Architecture	Python
Linux	x86_64, aarch64	3.10 – 3.14
macOS	x86_64, arm64	3.10 – 3.14
Windows	x86_64	3.10 – 3.14

A single wheel per platform covers all supported Python versions via the stable ABI (abi3-py310).

Basic install¶

pip install semvec sentence-transformers

sentence-transformers provides the embedder Semvec uses to convert text into vectors. It is the recommended default for evaluation and the majority of production workloads; alternative embedders (OpenAI, ONNX int8, custom) are covered under Embedders.

This is the minimum install. Proceed to the Quickstart (5 min).

With extras¶

# Multi-agent coordination primitives
pip install "semvec[cortex]"

# Coding-agent compaction + MCP server + Claude Code hooks
pip install "semvec[coding]"

# Compliance pack (event store, retention, GDPR forget, HMAC, RS256)
pip install "semvec[compliance]"
# When you also want the FastAPI compliance routes + middleware:
pip install "semvec[api,compliance]"

# REST API — starts the FastAPI server via `semvec serve`
pip install "semvec[api]"

# Benchmark harness dependencies (SentenceTransformers, datasets, psutil)
pip install "semvec[benchmarks]"

# BM25-hybrid retrieval (LOCOMO +2.6 pp F1)
pip install "semvec[hybrid]"

# Optional Mem0 head-to-head baseline for benchmarks
pip install "semvec[mem0]"

# Developer tooling (ruff, mypy, pre-commit, pytest, httpx)
pip install "semvec[dev]"

# mkdocs-material for the documentation site
pip install "semvec[docs]"

# Everything the developers use
pip install "semvec[cortex,coding,api,benchmarks,dev,docs]"

Extra	Pulls in	When you need it
`[cortex]`	— (marker only)	multi-agent coordination is always available; the extra marks intent for future pip resolvers
`[coding]`	`fastmcp>=2.0`	MCP server + Claude Code hooks
`[compliance]`	`cryptography>=42`	Event store, retention sweeper, deletion-certificate signer, HMAC + RS256 signing. FastAPI routes need `[api]` on top. See the Compliance pack.
`[jwt]`	`pyjwt>=2.9`	Stand-alone licence-JWT decoding without the full `[api]` extra — handy for build pipelines or short scripts that only need to inspect a token.
`[api]`	`fastapi`, `uvicorn[standard]`, `sqlalchemy`, `prometheus-client`, `pydantic`	REST API server — see REST API
`[benchmarks]`	`sentence-transformers`	running the LOCOMO bench runners under `benchmarks/`
`[hybrid]`	`bm25s>=0.2`, `nltk>=3.8`	BM25-hybrid retrieval — required to reproduce the LOCOMO +2.6 pp lift. See Embedders → Retrieval tuning.
`[mem0]`	`mem0ai>=0.1`, `faiss-cpu>=1.7`	head-to-head Mem0 comparison
`[dev]`	`ruff`, `mypy`, `pre-commit`, `pytest`, `httpx`	contributing — includes the FastAPI TestClient transport
`[docs]`	`mkdocs>=1.6`, `mkdocs-material>=9.5`, `pymdown-extensions`	building this site (`mkdocs serve`)

Embedder¶

Semvec does not ship an embedder and refuses to fall back to hash-based pseudo-embeddings. You need one of:

pip install sentence-transformers        # most common
pip install sentence-transformers torch  # with a torch backend of your choice

Any object exposing get_embedding(text) -> np.ndarray and get_dimension() -> int works — see the embedders guide.

Licensing¶

Community tier works without a key but is rate-limited (see Licensing for current quotas). Pro and Enterprise tiers require a signed JWT:

export SEMVEC_LICENSE_KEY="eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSI..."

See Licensing for tier details and error handling.

Source access¶

Semvec ships as a compiled wheel on PyPI. The Rust engine is proprietary; contact vertrieb@versino.de for source-availability terms (Enterprise) or security@versino.de for an NDA-bounded security review.