Architecture
Insight is a desktop application rather than a hosted document service. Its architecture is designed around two goals: keeping source documents under the user’s control and letting each newsroom choose how AI inference and collaboration should work.
Why a local desktop application?
Tauri provides the cross-platform desktop shell, Svelte provides the interface, and Rust handles document processing, storage, search, sync, and chat orchestration. A desktop application can work directly with local files and continue background processing without requiring an application server. Tauri uses the operating system’s webview instead of shipping a separate browser runtime.
How documents become searchable
MuPDF extracts the existing text from PDFs while preserving its page locations. milli builds a local full-text keyword search index using BM25. Search therefore runs on the user’s machine and does not require uploading the collection.
Original documents are immutable, content-addressed blobs. Extracted text is a separate, derived artifact: it can be regenerated or replaced when extraction improves without changing the source document. Content addressing also lets peers verify that they received exactly the data they requested.
How Insight talks to models
Insight uses rig to provide a consistent agent and tool-calling interface across model providers. When someone asks a question, the agent uses local tools to search the collection and read relevant passages, then asks the configured model to synthesize an answer from that evidence.
The model provider receives the conversation and retrieved excerpts. It does not receive direct access to the document library or search index. Hosted models and local model servers use the same research workflow, allowing users to choose between managed inference and keeping model processing local.
How collections sync
Collections use iroh for peer-to-peer replication. Replicated collection metadata records which documents and extractions belong to a collection; content-addressed storage transfers their actual bytes. Direct peer connections and NAT traversal allow colleagues to exchange data without running a central document server.
Recipients get full copies of the documents and extracted text, then build their own search indexes. This makes each copy usable offline and avoids depending on one peer remaining online. Conversations never sync.
A sharing ticket grants access to a collection rather than identifying an account on a central service. That enables direct collaboration, but it also means access cannot be revoked after a ticket is shared.