KTX

KTX is a workspace-first context layer for database agents. It stores warehouse memory in a project directory, generates and validates semantic-layer YAML, indexes knowledge, scans database schemas, and exposes the result through a CLI and MCP server.

KTX projects are plain files: YAML, Markdown, SQLite state, and generated artifacts. You can inspect them, commit them, and serve them to any MCP client.

What KTX provides

• Durable warehouse memory with semantic-layer sources and knowledge pages.
• Native scan connectors for SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, ClickHouse, SQL Server, BigQuery, and Snowflake.
• Agentic ingest with provenance links, tool transcripts, and replay metadata.
• Local semantic-layer query planning and optional query execution.
• A stdio MCP server with tools for connections, knowledge, semantic-layer sources, ingest reports, and replay.

Quick start

Run the pre-seeded demo through the public npm package:

npx @kaelio/ktx setup demo --no-input
npx @kaelio/ktx setup demo inspect

The default demo uses packaged sample data and prebuilt context. It does not require API keys, network access, or an LLM provider.

To replay the packaged ingest run, use:

npx @kaelio/ktx setup demo --mode replay --no-input

To run the full agentic demo with an LLM provider, set a provider key for the current process:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=$YOUR_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY \
  npx @kaelio/ktx setup demo --mode full --no-input

Interactive full-demo setup can prompt for a provider key without writing the key to ktx.yaml.

You can also install the CLI in a project or globally:

npm install @kaelio/ktx
npx ktx --help
npm install -g @kaelio/ktx
ktx --help

Build a local project

Create a project from a local workspace:

npm install @kaelio/ktx
PROJECT_DIR="$(mktemp -d)/ktx-demo"
npx ktx init "$PROJECT_DIR" --name ktx-demo

Create a SQLite warehouse:

python - "$PROJECT_DIR/demo.db" <<'PY'
import sqlite3
import sys

conn = sqlite3.connect(sys.argv[1])
conn.executescript("""
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS accounts;
CREATE TABLE accounts (
  account_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  account_name TEXT NOT NULL,
  segment TEXT NOT NULL,
  region TEXT NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO accounts VALUES
  (1, 'Acme Analytics', 'Mid-Market', 'NA'),
  (2, 'Beacon Bank', 'Enterprise', 'EMEA'),
  (3, 'Cobalt Coffee', 'SMB', 'NA'),
  (4, 'Delta Devices', 'Mid-Market', 'APAC'),
  (5, 'Evergreen Energy', 'Enterprise', 'NA');
""")
conn.close()
PY

Replace the generated ktx.yaml:

cat > "$PROJECT_DIR/ktx.yaml" <<YAML
project: ktx-demo
connections:
  warehouse:
    driver: sqlite
    path: $PROJECT_DIR/demo.db
    readonly: true
storage:
  state: sqlite
  search: sqlite-fts5
  git:
    auto_commit: true
    author: "ktx <ktx@example.com>"
memory:
  auto_commit: true
YAML

Write and validate a semantic-layer source:

npx ktx sl write accounts --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" \
  --connection-id warehouse --yaml 'name: accounts
table: accounts
description: CRM accounts with segmentation attributes.
grain:
  - account_id
columns:
  - name: account_id
    type: number
  - name: account_name
    type: string
  - name: segment
    type: string
  - name: region
    type: string
measures:
  - name: account_count
    expr: count(account_id)
joins: []
'

npx ktx sl validate accounts --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" \
  --connection-id warehouse

Generate SQL and execute the query:

npx ktx sl query --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" \
  --connection-id warehouse \
  --measure accounts.account_count \
  --dimension accounts.segment \
  --order-by accounts.account_count:desc \
  --limit 5 \
  --format sql

npx ktx sl query --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" \
  --connection-id warehouse \
  --measure accounts.account_count \
  --dimension accounts.segment \
  --order-by accounts.account_count:desc \
  --limit 5 \
  --execute \
  --max-rows 5

List and test the warehouse connection:

npx ktx connection list --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR"
npx ktx connection test warehouse --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR"

The connection test prints the configured driver and discovered table count:

Driver: sqlite
Tables: 1

Scan the demo warehouse

Scan artifacts are written under raw-sources/warehouse/live-database/<syncId>/ in the project directory.

SCAN_OUTPUT="$(npx ktx scan warehouse --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR")"
printf '%s\n' "$SCAN_OUTPUT"
SCAN_RUN_ID="$(printf '%s\n' "$SCAN_OUTPUT" | awk '/^Run: / { print $2 }')"
npx ktx scan status --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" "$SCAN_RUN_ID"
npx ktx scan report --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" "$SCAN_RUN_ID"

For non-SQLite drivers, prefer credential references such as --url env:NAME or --url file:PATH over literal credential URLs.

Managed Python runtime

KTX installs its Python runtime only when a Python-backed command needs it. The runtime lives outside the npm cache, is versioned by the installed CLI version, and is managed by ktx runtime commands.

KTX requires uv on PATH to create the managed runtime. Install uv with your system package manager or the official installer before running Python- backed KTX commands. KTX doesn't download uv automatically; run ktx runtime doctor if runtime installation fails:

npx ktx runtime install --yes
npx ktx runtime status
npx ktx runtime doctor
npx ktx runtime start
npx ktx runtime stop
npx ktx runtime prune --dry-run
npx ktx runtime prune --yes

Use runtime prune --dry-run to preview stale runtime directories from older CLI versions. Add --yes to remove those stale directories after daemon processes are stopped.

Commands such as npx @kaelio/ktx sl query ... --yes can install the core runtime lazily from the bundled wheel. Local embeddings remain lazy; prepare them only when you select local sentence-transformers embeddings:

npx ktx runtime install --feature local-embeddings --yes
npx ktx runtime start --feature local-embeddings

Serve MCP

Start the stdio MCP server from the project directory:

npx ktx serve --mcp stdio --project-dir "$PROJECT_DIR" \
  --user-id local \
  --semantic-compute \
  --execute-queries \
  --yes

The --semantic-compute flag uses the managed Python runtime when no explicit semantic compute URL is provided. KTX starts or reuses the managed runtime as needed.

The MCP server exposes connection_list, knowledge_search, knowledge_read, knowledge_write, sl_list_sources, sl_read_source, sl_write_source, sl_validate, sl_query, ingest_trigger, ingest_status, ingest_report, and ingest_replay.

Workspace packages

• packages/context: core TypeScript context library.
• packages/cli: CLI wrapper over the context package.
• packages/llm: LLM and embedding provider helpers.
• packages/connector-bigquery: BigQuery scan connector.
• packages/connector-clickhouse: ClickHouse scan connector.
• packages/connector-mysql: MySQL scan connector.
• packages/connector-postgres: Postgres scan connector.
• packages/connector-snowflake: Snowflake scan connector.
• packages/connector-sqlite: SQLite scan connector.
• packages/connector-sqlserver: SQL Server scan connector.
• python/ktx-sl: semantic-layer engine.
• python/ktx-daemon: portable compute service for semantic-layer operations.

Development

Install dependencies and run checks:

pnpm install
pnpm run check
uv sync --all-packages
source .venv/bin/activate
uv run pytest

Use the optional development binary when you want a local ktx-dev command:

pnpm run link:dev
ktx-dev --help

The repository uses pnpm for TypeScript packages and uv for Python packages.

Release status

This repository builds one public npm artifact named @kaelio/ktx. The release artifact manifest contains the public npm tarball and the bundled kaelio-ktx runtime wheel. The first public npm handoff is policy-gated through release-policy.json, which keeps Python package publishing disabled because KTX-owned Python code ships inside the npm package as a bundled wheel. The python/ktx-sl and python/ktx-daemon directories remain source packages for development, not public release artifacts.

Build local package artifacts and verify the guarded dry-run publish path with:

source .venv/bin/activate
pnpm run artifacts:check
pnpm run release:readiness
pnpm run release:npm-publish

Run the live npm publish only from the manual KTX Release workflow with the publish_live input enabled after the NPM_TOKEN secret is configured.

License

KTX is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE.