Show HN: TinkerBird – A Chrome-native vector database | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: TinkerBird – A Chrome-native vector database

github.com

107 pointswizenheimer34 comments

I haven't played with it yet, but very impressive :) a full vector DB built on top of IndexedDB. That means it should run on all modern browsers, and should be able to handle large volumes of data (at least, proportional to disk space).

Thanks, mate. I guess the README is dated. Here's a sample app built around tinkerbird. Make it yours :D

Playground: https://tinkerboard.vercel.app/ Repo: https://github.com/wizenheimer/tinkerboard

How is the state of IndexedDB on Safari IO now days? Last heard that it is pretty bad with unexpected wip if it is not used for a while.

That's a pretty well written bug report: https://github.com/wizenheimer/tinkerbird/issues/5

I hope you get the help you need for that!

Thanks, mate. Skill issue :D

Is there something that makes this specific to Chrome or is this a web compatible library?

Yes - I don't understand the "Chrome" part at all. I presumed it was a Chrome extension but it doesn't seem to be.

They just meant it as a JavaScript library, apparently.

OP- the term "chrome native" is pretty inaccurate and is giving people the wrong idea about what you're showing off.

Appreciate the feedback, mate

yes, that makes it sound like it is Chrome-exclusive, which is not something we want.

> I don't understand the "Chrome" part at all

It uses, relies and depends on Chrome exposed primitive such IndexedDB. Hence the term chrome native.

Honestly, didn't give much thought to it. Just rolled with it :D

I think the reason you're getting so many comments on this aspect of it is because a lot of people on HN have been through several rounds of the browser wars and many care deeply about keeping the web vendor neutral (especially in terms of the near-monopoly that Google has).

Whilst there's often good reasons to state that something will only work on Chrome - it's something that should probably be wrapped in a something approximating a mild apology:

"Whilst this might work on any browser that supports IndexedDB I've currently only tested it on blah blah" - that kind of thing...

https://caniuse.com/indexeddb

This is helpful, thanks mate. Appreciate it.

What the hell does “chrome native” mean? Is it an extension? Who uses it?

I can’t figure that out either - especially when the readme mentions using typescript, which is very much not chrome-native - you have to compile to JavaScript before chrome will have anything to do when it -

Maybe it’s referring to the use of IndexDB?

So one could retain the contents of every website every visited and then run local, in-browser searches against that content? Is that the idea? This library would serve as the vector DB?

Imagine this. You stumbled across this insane search technique, which knows what you want. It doesn't care if you know the exact keywords or not, it just gets what you're after. We call it Vector Search / Semantic Search. Cool stuff right? You don't have to be a keyword wizard to get your stuff. But there's a problem.

Unlike it's keyword search counterpart it expensive. Order of magnitude expensive. All because you need to maintain a vector search index and keep it available server side.

Enter Tinkerbird. This little library takes the heavy lifting and pushes it client side. Stream your embeddings, front it via CDN or cache it on client. Now you get benefits of vector index without the costs of maintaining one.

> TinkerBird uses IndexedDB as it's storage layer, which in turn builds upon Blobs and LevelDB storage systems. By using Indexeddb, it benefits from IndexedDB's adoption, stability and familiarity as a native choice for offline first workflows. Super impressive. Looking forward to use it!

Great project! Thanks for sharing, I'm looking for something like this.

One thing I'm curious about tho is the evolution of the project. Github says the last update in the code was 7 months ago. Is it because it is ready/done?

Avoiding the server call seems to only be time-efficient if calls to embed are time-efficient. The nice thing about server side inference is that you can use embedding models that can handle web-scale data independent of hardware

Time-efficiency is not the only metric to consider. Privacy, and offline mode are also important. Great tool for federated learning.

So one could retain the contents of every website every visited and then run local, in-browser searches against that content? Is that the idea? This li

This looks really promising and thanks for sharing! I've actually been looking into this exact type of functionality lately, for anyone else I'm just going to drop some other projects in this area (also if anyone, including OP, want's to chime in on how they compare- i know there's all sorts of trade-offs ie. the similarity algo chosen, one of these relies on wasm, etc):

https://github.com/tantaraio/voy

https://github.com/nitaiaharoni1/vector-storage

https://github.com/danielivanovz/indexed-vector-store

https://github.com/yusufhilmi/client-vector-search

Another area I've looked into briefly is also trying to generate vector embeddings fully in-browser. I know there will likely be tradeoffs with dimensionality / overall accuracy/performance but having a semi-decent way to do this in-browser would be awesome.

This project only runs in node (but there's an issue that talks about how it might be modified to run in-browser):

https://github.com/Anush008/fastembed-js

Looks like transformers.js supports embeddings in-browser:

https://github.com/xenova/transformers.js/releases/tag/2.1.0

https://github.com/pinecone-io/semantic-search-example/blob/...

Also it appears the client-vector-search supports both embeddings & vector indexing

https://github.com/yusufhilmi/client-vector-search

Hope this helps others looking into this stuff!

Cool! Keep it up!

Thanks, mate. Incase, you feel like playing around. https://tinkerboard.vercel.app/

how would you use this within chrome?

It’s a vector db on top of IndexedDB. I fail to see what’s “Chrome” (or “native”) about it. Is there anything Chrome-specific that prevents it from working in any other modern browser?

That's right, it should. If it supports indexeddb, it supports tinkerbird. Ref: https://caniuse.com/indexeddb

PS: Pretty early nonetheless, hacked it together during last Christmas. Gotta make it usable.

PPS: I guess the README is dated. Built out a sample app for Tinkerbird. Feel free to take a look: https://github.com/wizenheimer/tinkerboard

Cool, tried the demo on Safari. Might want to consider rewording to avoid misconception about browser support.

Or misconceptions about what it even is. I didn't realise it was a javascript library.

I wish you'd written the introduction in the readme yourself instead of letting a LLM do it for you. "utilizes", "significant challenge facing", "disrupts workflows" and then several repeats of the same information... all tell tale signs.

But then again, multiple "it's" vs "its" spelling mistakes. Tell tale sign of a human, possibly a native speaker.

It actually reads distinctly not ai written, but calling things ai is vogue now

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