Does distill use paid AI services?

Can use OpenAI. Its settings have keys for this paid API. Its README says whether one is required.

Is distill still maintained?

Slowing down. Last change 4 months ago. Latest release v2.0.0, 6 months ago.

New, little track record. 2 stars, 6 months old. Look at the code and the owner before running it.

How to install on macOS

afly007/distill

Self-hosted RAG pipeline — ingest technical PDFs and web pages into a searchable knowledge base, exposed as MCP tools

Shell scripts#mcp#qdrant#rag#self-hosted

Before you start

Is it free?: YesOpen source (MIT).
Paid AI services?: Can use OpenAIIts settings have keys for this paid API. Its README says whether one is required.
Still maintained?: Slowing downLast change 4 months ago. Latest release v2.0.0, 6 months ago.
Can I trust it?: New, little track record2 stars, 6 months old. Look at the code and the owner before running it.

Difficulty: Moderate
Time: about 15 min
Stars: ★ 2
Activity: Updated 4 months ago

GitHub didn't answer, so this is the saved copy from 18 h ago

Will it work on macOS?

Yes, with Docker on macOS

It's a self-hosted app: the README runs it with Docker, and you open it in your browser.
On macOS that means installing Docker Desktop first.

Your system

macOS Windows Linux

Start here

Heads-upBuilding it yourself? It also needs Vector DB and 3 settings in .env (1 secret).

Run it with Docker

A self-hosted app: Docker runs it on your computer and you open it in the browser. Needs Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine on Linux). Run docker compose commands inside the cloned repo folder.

Docker

docker compose up -d

From the README, exactly as the maintainers wrote it.

Did you get it running?

No reports for macOS yet.

Still stuck? Get a written guide

GitManual AI Agent reads the 7 key files and writes a step-by-step guide for macOS. Once written, it's saved for everyone.

Parts list

1×Docker tool
1×make tool
1×Vector DB service

3× settings in .env

OPENAI_API_KEYsecret
COLLECTION_NAME
IMAGE_BASE

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Is this your repo?

Add a badge to your README so newcomers find these steps.

[![Setup manual](https://gitmanual.com/afly007/distill/badge.svg)](https://gitmanual.com/afly007/distill)

Good to know

Has CLAUDE.md — instructions for coding agents. You can open Claude Code (or another agent) in the cloned folder and ask it to do the setup for you.
Nested projects: ingest/requirements.txt, mcp-server/requirements.txt

Details

License: MIT
Open issues: 17
Branch: main

Files we read (7)

.env.example

.github/workflows/ci.yml

.github/workflows/release.yml

Makefile

README.md

docker-compose.yml

pyproject.toml

35 files in the repo

Yes, with Docker on macOS

Start here

Run it with Docker

Did you get it running?

Still stuck? Get a written guide

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