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FAQ
No. Columbus contains no LLM. All ranking, the "why relevant" text, and risk hints are deterministic heuristics. It produces context for LLMs; it doesn't use one. See Determinism & Local-Only.
No. Columbus is local-only — no network calls and no API keys. Embeddings run
on-device (a bundled ONNX model); nothing is shipped to a cloud. It works
offline. git is the only hard runtime dependency; the onnxruntime library
(bundled in release archives) enables semantic search.
Because the database stores metadata, git anchors and embedding vectors only,
never code. Every snippet and line range is rebuilt live from the working tree at
query time; the vectors are a derived index, not your source. Edit a file and the
next show reflects it — even without reindexing. See
Never Stale: Live Reconstruction.
The index is a fast chart of where things are (symbols, roles, the import graph). It powers discovery and ranking. It can lag the working tree, but that only affects whether brand-new entities are found yet — never the accuracy of a result you get back.
Columbus does embed — but on-device, and the result is reproducible (a
fixed model, same vectors → same ranking). The key differences from typical RAG:
nothing ships to a cloud and there's no per-query cost; the snippet and exact
line range you get back are reconstructed live from the working tree, so a
result is never stale even when the index lags; and vector similarity is
re-ranked by transparent heuristics, with a why on every hit.
Grep finds text; it doesn't rank, doesn't understand symbols/roles, doesn't give you the dependency graph, and doesn't persist decisions. Columbus returns ranked, symbol-aware context with exact ranges plus durable memory — in one deterministic call. See Searching Effectively.
No. It stores and retrieves; it never drives, gates, or enforces. Orchestration and guardrails live in the agent/plugin layer. See Scope Boundary.
In your OS data dir (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support/columbus on macOS),
keyed by project_id — never in your repo. Override with COLUMBUS_DATA_DIR.
See Configuration.
No. install adds it to .git/info/exclude, so it stays local-only.
TypeScript/TSX, JavaScript/JSX, Python, Go, and Markdown in V1. See Supported Languages.
Through skills that teach the agent the CLI, consuming --json / --llm
output. See Using Columbus with Your Agent.
Columbus — the navigator your coding agent has been missing · local-only, deterministic code context · Repository · Issues · MIT License
Getting started
Concepts
Guides
- Using Columbus with Your Agent
- Searching Effectively
- Navigating Code
- Project Memory
- Tracking Work: Epics, Stories & Tasks
- Keeping the Index Fresh
Command reference
Reference
- Output Modes
- JSON Contract & Errors
- Exit Codes
- Configuration
- Supported Languages
- Color & Environment
Project