Developer builds 120KB vector search library in C with zero dependencies, rivals ChromaDB
A developer has released NanoVector, a lightweight vector search library written in pure C with SIMD optimizations, designed as a minimal alternative to tools like ChromaDB and FAISS. The library weighs just 120KB unpacked and has no external dependencies, compared to ChromaDB's 35-plus transitive packages and 120MB-plus download size. NanoVector's Python cold import time is reported at 0.6 milliseconds, roughly 3,000 times faster than ChromaDB's measured 1,850 milliseconds. The tool targets AI agent developers building local RAG systems or CLI tools who need to store small-to-medium collections of embeddings, typically between 50 and 50,000 vectors. It supports AVX2, ARM NEON, and pure assembly backends, and persists data in a single binary .nvec file installable via pip.
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