Khoj¶

What it is¶

Khoj is an open-source, personal AI assistant that can search through your notes, documents, and even external files to provide context-aware answers.

What problem it solves¶

It bridges the gap between your disparate data sources (Markdown notes, PDFs, GitHub repos) and a conversational AI interface.

Where it fits in the stack¶

Category: Agent / Knowledge Management / Search

Typical use cases¶

Searching through personal notes (Obsidian, Emacs Org-mode).
Asking questions about local document repositories.
Automating information retrieval for daily tasks.

Strengths¶

Supports offline, local-first operation.
Integrates with popular note-taking apps.
Features a desktop app and Emacs plugin.

Limitations¶

Indexing large datasets can be resource-intensive.
Initial setup might require some technical knowledge.

When to use it¶

When you want a unified, AI-powered search across all your personal knowledge.

When not to use it¶

For public-facing search engines or large-scale enterprise data.

Licensing and cost¶

Open Source: Yes (AGPL-3.0)
Cost: Free (Self-hosted) / Paid (Cloud)
Self-hostable: Yes

Getting started¶

Docker Compose Setup¶

Khoj can be self-hosted using Docker. It requires a PostgreSQL database with the pgvector extension.

services:
  khoj:
    image: ghcr.io/khoj-ai/khoj-cloud:latest
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      - KHOJ_ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com
      - KHOJ_ADMIN_PASSWORD=secure_password
      - DATABASE_URL=postgresql://khoj:password@db:5432/khoj
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy

  db:
    image: pgvector/pgvector:pg16
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_DB=khoj
      - POSTGRES_USER=khoj
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U khoj"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5

API examples¶

Khoj provides a REST API for interacting with your indexed documents and agents.

Chat with an Agent¶

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "message": "What do my notes say about the K3s cluster setup?",
    "stream": false
  }'

Obsidian — Primary source for many Khoj users.
AnyType — Local-first P2P knowledge base.
Verba — Weaviate-powered RAG assistant.
Paperless-ngx — Document management system.
n8n — Automation tool for ingesting data into Khoj.
Local LLM — Can be used as the inference backend for Khoj.
RAG Pattern — The underlying architecture of Khoj.

Sources / References¶

Contribution Metadata¶

Last reviewed: 2026-05-13
Confidence: high