README

RAG Engine for Laravel

📖 Full documentation: laravel-rag-engine.selli.io

Add semantic search and AI answers over your own content to any Laravel app. RAG Engine owns the whole Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipeline — ingesting documents, splitting them, turning them into searchable vectors, and retrieving the most relevant passages for any query. Writing a final answer with an LLM is an optional layer on top.

Infrastructure, not a feature. The engine owns ingestion → retrieval; generation is optional and decoupled. Vertical packages, internal agents and search modules build on top without re-implementing ingestion, chunking, embedding or retrieval.

What you can build

• 🔎 Semantic search — a search box that matches by meaning, not keywords.
• 🤖 AI Q&A / chatbots — LLM answers grounded in your content, with citations.
• 📚 "Ask your docs / tickets / wiki" features inside an existing app.
• 🧭 Similarity / recommendations — "find records like this one".

Use just the search half (no LLM, no AI bill) or add generation later — same code, one config switch.

Table of contents

• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Quick start
• Indexing Eloquent models
• Asking questions with an LLM
• Configuration
• Supported drivers
• Security & multi-tenancy
• Documentation
• Testing & development
• License

Features

• Multi-format ingestion — raw text, file uploads, URLs (SSRF-guarded), cloud storage and Eloquent records. Safely parses Markdown, HTML, XML, CSV, JSON, DOCX and PDF.
• Pluggable everything — parsing, chunking, embedding, vector store, reranking and LLM are swappable drivers behind stable contracts.
• 10 embedding providers — OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Mistral, Jina, Voyage, Cohere, Gemini, Hugging Face, Ollama, plus a deterministic fake driver for tests.
• Powerful retrieval — metadata filters, hybrid (semantic + keyword) search with RRF, MMR diversification, reranking, relevance thresholds and small-to-big (parent-child) context expansion.
• Embeddable Eloquent models — make any model searchable via one contract; recursive composition of relations, auto-sync on change, and vector→model trace-back.
• Security by design — BYOK envelope encryption, a KMS abstraction, crypto-shredding for "right to erasure", and PII redaction on by default.
• Multi-tenancy — automatic, fail-closed per-tenant scoping of every query.
• Operations from day one — immutable (WORM) audit log, cost tracking, lifecycle events, queued/batchable ingestion and Artisan commands.
• EU-resident by default — content and embeddings stay in the EU unless you explicitly opt into a non-EU provider.

Requirements

A dedicated vector database is not required to begin: the default store is in-memory, and the database store works on plain Postgres/MySQL/SQLite. Use native pgvector or Qdrant at larger scale.

Installation

composer require sellinnate/rag-engine

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="rag-engine-config"
php artisan vendor:publish --tag="rag-engine-migrations"
php artisan migrate

The service provider and Rag facade auto-register via package discovery. Out of the box the package uses zero-network, deterministic drivers (fake embedder, in-memory store, local KMS) so your test suite runs offline.

Important

The fake embedder is for tests only — it doesn't understand meaning. For a real search feature, configure a real embedder (see Configuration).

Quick start

use Sellinnate\RagEngine\Facades\Rag;

// 1. INGEST — register content as a Document (stored & encrypted, not yet searchable).
$document = Rag::ingest(
    Rag::source()->text('Refunds are issued within 14 business days of an approved request.')
);

// 2. PROCESS — run the pipeline: parse → clean & redact PII → chunk → embed → store.
Rag::process($document);            // or: ProcessDocumentJob::dispatch(...) on a queue

// 3. SEARCH — find the most relevant chunks by meaning.
$hits = Rag::search('how long until I get my money back?')->topK(3)->get();

$hits[0]->content;                  // "Refunds are issued within 14 business days..."
$hits[0]->score;                    // relevance score
$hits[0]->metadata['source_ref'];   // provenance: where it came from

// 4. (OPTIONAL) ASK — let an LLM write a cited answer from the retrieved chunks.
$answer = Rag::ask('how long do refunds take?')->using('openai')->generate();
$answer->answer;                    // "Refunds take 14 business days. [1]"
$answer->citations;                 // [['index' => 1, 'document_id' => '…', 'chunk_id' => '…']]

Refine retrieval fluently:

$hits = Rag::search('envelope encryption')
    ->topK(5)
    ->threshold(0.4)        // drop weak matches
    ->where('tag', 'docs')  // metadata filter
    ->hybrid()              // semantic + keyword (RRF)
    ->rerank()              // precision pass
    ->expandParents()       // small-to-big context
    ->get();

Indexing Eloquent models

If the content you want to search already lives in your database, make the model embeddable — it then stays in sync automatically as rows change, and every vector traces back to its model.

use Sellinnate\RagEngine\Concerns\HasEmbeddings;
use Sellinnate\RagEngine\Contracts\Embeddable;
use Sellinnate\RagEngine\Eloquent\EmbeddableDefinition;

class Article extends Model implements Embeddable
{
    use HasEmbeddings; // auto-indexes on save, removes on delete

    public function toEmbeddable(): EmbeddableDefinition
    {
        return EmbeddableDefinition::make()
            ->add('Title', $this->title)
            ->add('Body', $this->body)
            ->include($this->author, 'author')          // compose a related model
            ->includeMany($this->comments, 'comments');  // recursively
    }
}

// Trace a search hit back to its model:
$article = Rag::models()->resolve($hits[0]); // App\Models\Article instance, or null

Model file fields (a PDF/DOCX upload) can be embedded too — addFile() parses the file to text and folds it into the model's embedding; non-embeddable binaries (zip/exe…) are skipped or rejected per policy. See docs/concepts/eloquent-models.md.

Asking questions with an LLM

Search returns the relevant chunks; an LLM turns them into a written, cited answer via Rag::ask(). This layer is optional and decoupled — with the default null driver, ask() returns the sources with an empty answer, so search-only apps carry no LLM dependency.

The package ships two LLM drivers: anthropic (Claude) and openai (OpenAI and any OpenAI-compatible API — Mistral, Ollama, Groq, OpenRouter…).

# .env — use Anthropic Claude to answer questions
RAG_LLM=anthropic
RAG_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
RAG_ANTHROPIC_MODEL=claude-sonnet-4-6     # or claude-opus-4-8 / claude-haiku-4-5-...

$result = Rag::ask('What is our refund policy?')
    ->topK(5)
    ->using('anthropic')   // or omit to use the default RAG_LLM
    ->generate();

$result->answer;     // "Refunds are issued within 14 business days. [1]"
$result->citations;  // [['index' => 1, 'document_id' => '…', 'chunk_id' => '…']]
$result->sources;    // the SearchHits the answer was built from

Note

Anthropic has no embedding API, so anthropic is a generation-only driver. Keep a real RAG_EMBEDDER (Mistral, OpenAI, Ollama…) for the search side. A common combo is Mistral/Ollama embeddings + Claude answers.

Retrieved content is treated as untrusted: the default prompt fences it and tells the model not to follow instructions inside it (prompt-injection hardening). Full guide: docs/concepts/generation.md.

Configuration

Configuration lives in config/rag-engine.php and works like Laravel's config/database.php: you define named connections per subsystem and pick a default. Switching provider = changing one name in .env.

# .env — switch to a real embedder (Ollama is free & local)
RAG_EMBEDDER=ollama
RAG_OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434

# ...or a hosted provider:
RAG_EMBEDDER=openai
RAG_OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Note

API keys go in .env, never in the committed config. A copy-ready list of every variable ships as .env.example. See docs/getting-started/configuration.md.

Supported drivers

Embedders (RAG_EMBEDDER)

Vector stores (RAG_VECTOR_STORE): memory (tests/dev) · database (portable SQL: Postgres/MySQL/SQLite, brute-force) · pgvector (native Postgres ANN: vector column + HNSW + <=>) · qdrant (EU self-hostable, ANN at scale). Full setup, including where to configure the Postgres connection, is in the Vector stores guide.

LLMs (RAG_LLM, for ask()): anthropic (Claude) · openai (OpenAI and any OpenAI-compatible API: Mistral, Ollama, Groq, OpenRouter…) · null/fake. Anthropic is generation-only (no embeddings). Answers can be streamed with Rag::ask(...)->stream().

Rerankers (RAG_RERANKER, optional cross-encoder pass): cohere · jina (EU) · null/fake.

Parsers: plain text · Markdown · HTML · XML · CSV/TSV · JSON · DOCX · PDF.

Chunkers: recursive (default) · sentence · markdown · fixed (char- or token-based), with optional parent-child and contextual headers.

All drivers share one contract — switching backends needs no code changes, and you can register your own (see docs/guides/custom-drivers.md).

Security & multi-tenancy

• BYOK envelope encryption — content is encrypted at rest with per-item DEKs wrapped by a tenant KEK in a KMS; the plaintext key never persists.
• Crypto-shredding — honour "right to erasure" by destroying the key, making data unrecoverable everywhere (including DB backups) at once.
• PII redaction — emails, cards (Luhn), IBANs (mod-97), Italian fiscal codes and phone numbers are redacted before indexing, by default.
• Fail-closed multi-tenancy — every query is automatically scoped to the current tenant; scope can never be widened from a query (a tested invariant).
• Tamper-evident audit log — append-only with database-level WORM triggers.

use Sellinnate\RagEngine\Facades\Rag;

// Run work scoped to a tenant (previous tenant restored afterwards):
Rag::forTenant('tenant-7', fn () => Rag::search('q')->get());

// Right to erasure — crypto-shred a tenant:
Rag::kms()->destroyKey('tenant-7');

See docs/concepts/security.md and docs/concepts/multi-tenancy.md.

Documentation

The full documentation is hosted at laravel-rag-engine.selli.io. The sources live in docs/ and are built into a static site with docmd:

npm install
npm run docs:dev     # local preview
npm run docs:build   # static site into ./site

Start here:

• 🧠 What is RAG? — concepts + glossary, from zero.
• 🚀 Quickstart — a complete worked example.
• 🏗️ Architecture — how the pieces fit together.
• 📥 Ingesting content · 🔎 Retrieval & search · 💬 Generation
• 🗄️ Vector stores & configuration — incl. pgvector Postgres setup.
• 🧩 Contracts reference · 🛠️ Custom drivers

Testing & development

composer test         # run the Pest suite (410 tests)
composer analyse      # PHPStan, level 8
composer format       # Laravel Pint (code style)

# Coverage (needs a coverage driver, e.g. Xdebug/PCOV):
XDEBUG_MODE=coverage vendor/bin/pest --coverage --min=90

Quality gates kept green on every change: 410 tests, PHPStan level 8, Pint clean, ≥90% coverage.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.md.