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HelixDB

helix-db

Rust OLTP graph database on object storage with native vector and BM25 search: property graph, traversal-prefiltered ANN and full-text in one transactional engine; Rust, TS, Go, Python SDKs.

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Curator's take

Pick HelixDB when your agent's retrieval is really a graph question with a similarity step inside it ('passages near this embedding, but only ones linked to this customer') and you would rather not glue Neo4j to a vector store and keep them consistent. Graph, vectors and BM25 live in one transactional engine on object storage, queried through typed SDK builders in four languages, and `helix chef` scaffolds an app through your coding agent. Local dev needs Docker or Podman unless you use embedded mode. Skip it if you need Cypher or Bolt compatibility with an existing Neo4j stack (hydradb speaks both), or if your data is flat documents: a plain vector store is simpler.

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README.md2 min read

HelixDB is an open-source (Apache 2.0) graph database with native vector search and BM25 full-text search, built in Rust on object storage. Store entities, relationships, embeddings, and text in one transactional engine and query them together from Rust, TypeScript, Go, or Python.

Graph Vector Full-text
Model entities, relationships, and typed properties as a labeled property graph. Approximate nearest-neighbor search, prefiltered by graph traversal. BM25 keyword search over node and edge properties.

Getting started

Install the CLI. On macOS and Linux:

curl -sSL "https://install.helix-db.com" | bash

On Windows PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelixDB/helix-db/main/crates/cli/install.ps1 | iex

Create a project, start a local instance (requires Docker or Podman), and run the generated query:

mkdir my-helix-app && cd my-helix-app
helix init local                               # writes helix.toml and examples/request.json
helix start dev                                # serves http://localhost:6969
helix query dev --file examples/request.json

Local data lives in memory by default; helix start dev --disk persists it across restarts. To run HelixDB inside your own process without a server, use embedded mode. The full walkthrough is in the quickstart. Already installed? Run helix update.

Or let an agent build it

helix chef installs the HelixDB query skills and docs MCP, scaffolds a project, starts a local instance, seeds example data, and hands off to the first coding agent it finds, in this order: Claude Code → OpenAI Codex → OpenCode → Cursor Agent. Describe what you want to build and it builds a working app, frontend included.

helix chef

Query from your app

Write queries with an SDK and send them to a running instance through POST /v2/query. There is no build or deploy step, and every SDK produces the same JSON request. (/v2/ is the wire endpoint version; the current HelixDB and SDK generation is v3.) The examples below target the local instance on http://localhost:6969. New to the query model? Start with the Query walkthrough.

SDK Package Current release Setup guide
Rust helix-db 3.0.0 Rust setup
TypeScript @helix-db/helix-db 3.1.0 TypeScript setup
Python helix-db 0.3.4 [Python setup](https://docs.helix-db.com/database/helix-db/start-here/sdk-setup/python