Hey there! We are so excited that you're interested in Onyx.
As an open source project in a rapidly changing space, we welcome all contributions.
The GitHub Issues page is a great place to start for contribution ideas.
To ensure that your contribution is aligned with the project's direction, please reach out to any maintainer on the Onyx team via Slack / Discord or email.
Issues that have been explicitly approved by the maintainers (aligned with the direction of the project)
will be marked with the approved by maintainers label.
Issues marked good first issue are an especially great place to start.
Connectors to other tools are another great place to contribute. For details on how, refer to this README.md.
If you have a new/different contribution in mind, we'd love to hear about it! Your input is vital to making sure that Onyx moves in the right direction. Before starting on implementation, please raise a GitHub issue.
Also, always feel free to message the founders (Chris Weaver / Yuhong Sun) on Slack / Discord directly about anything at all.
To contribute to this project, please follow the "fork and pull request" workflow. When opening a pull request, mention related issues and feel free to tag relevant maintainers.
Before creating a pull request please make sure that the new changes conform to the formatting and linting requirements. See the Formatting and Linting section for how to run these checks locally.
Our goal is to make contributing as easy as possible. If you run into any issues please don't hesitate to reach out. That way we can help future contributors and users can avoid the same issue.
We also have support channels and generally interesting discussions on our Slack and Discord.
We would love to see you there!
Onyx being a fully functional app, relies on some external software, specifically:
- Postgres (Relational DB)
- Vespa (Vector DB/Search Engine)
- Redis (Cache)
- MinIO (File Store)
- Nginx (Not needed for development flows generally)
Note: This guide provides instructions to build and run Onyx locally from source with Docker containers providing the above external software. We believe this combination is easier for development purposes. If you prefer to use pre-built container images, we provide instructions on running the full Onyx stack within Docker below.
Be sure to use Python version 3.11. For instructions on installing Python 3.11 on macOS, refer to the CONTRIBUTING_MACOS.md readme.
If using a lower version, modifications will have to be made to the code. If using a higher version, sometimes some libraries will not be available (i.e. we had problems with Tensorflow in the past with higher versions of python).
Currently, we use pip and recommend creating a virtual environment.
For convenience here's a command for it:
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activateFor Windows, activate the virtual environment using Command Prompt:
.venv\Scripts\activateIf using PowerShell, the command slightly differs:
.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1Install the required python dependencies:
pip install -r backend/requirements/default.txt
pip install -r backend/requirements/dev.txt
pip install -r backend/requirements/ee.txt
pip install -r backend/requirements/model_server.txtInstall Playwright for Python (headless browser required by the Web Connector)
In the activated Python virtualenv, install Playwright for Python by running:
playwright installYou may have to deactivate and reactivate your virtualenv for playwright to appear on your path.
Install Node.js and npm for the frontend.
Once the above is done, navigate to onyx/web run:
npm iFor the backend, you'll need to setup pre-commit hooks (black / reorder-python-imports). First, install pre-commit (if you don't have it already) following the instructions here.
With the virtual environment active, install the pre-commit library with:
pip install pre-commitThen, from the onyx/backend directory, run:
pre-commit installAdditionally, we use mypy for static type checking.
Onyx is fully type-annotated, and we want to keep it that way!
To run the mypy checks manually, run python -m mypy . from the onyx/backend directory.
We use prettier for formatting. The desired version (2.8.8) will be installed via a npm i from the onyx/web directory.
To run the formatter, use npx prettier --write . from the onyx/web directory.
Please double check that prettier passes before creating a pull request.
We highly recommend using VSCode debugger for development. See CONTRIBUTING_VSCODE.md for more details.
Otherwise, you can follow the instructions below to run the application for development.
You will need Docker installed to run these containers.
First navigate to onyx/deployment/docker_compose, then start up Postgres/Vespa/Redis/MinIO with:
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml -p onyx-stack up -d index relational_db cache minio(index refers to Vespa, relational_db refers to Postgres, and cache refers to Redis)
To start the frontend, navigate to onyx/web and run:
npm run devNext, start the model server which runs the local NLP models.
Navigate to onyx/backend and run:
uvicorn model_server.main:app --reload --port 9000For Windows (for compatibility with both PowerShell and Command Prompt):
powershell -Command "uvicorn model_server.main:app --reload --port 9000"The first time running Onyx, you will need to run the DB migrations for Postgres. After the first time, this is no longer required unless the DB models change.
Navigate to onyx/backend and with the venv active, run:
alembic upgrade headNext, start the task queue which orchestrates the background jobs. Jobs that take more time are run async from the API server.
Still in onyx/backend, run:
python ./scripts/dev_run_background_jobs.pyTo run the backend API server, navigate back to onyx/backend and run:
AUTH_TYPE=disabled uvicorn onyx.main:app --reload --port 8080For Windows (for compatibility with both PowerShell and Command Prompt):
powershell -Command "
$env:AUTH_TYPE='disabled'
uvicorn onyx.main:app --reload --port 8080
"Note: If you need finer logging, add the additional environment variable
LOG_LEVEL=DEBUGto the relevant services.
You should now have 4 servers running:
- Web server
- Backend API
- Model server
- Background jobs
Now, visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser. You should see the Onyx onboarding wizard where you can connect your external LLM provider to Onyx.
You've successfully set up a local Onyx instance! 🏁
You can run the full Onyx application stack from pre-built images including all external software dependencies.
Navigate to onyx/deployment/docker_compose and run:
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml -p onyx-stack up -dAfter Docker pulls and starts these containers, navigate to http://localhost:3000 to use Onyx.
If you want to make changes to Onyx and run those changes in Docker, you can also build a local version of the Onyx container images that incorporates your changes like so:
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml -p onyx-stack up -d --buildOnyx loosely follows the SemVer versioning standard. Major changes are released with a "minor" version bump. Currently we use patch release versions to indicate small feature changes. A set of Docker containers will be pushed automatically to DockerHub with every tag. You can see the containers here.