Show HN: EdgeVec – Sub-millisecond vector search in the browser (Rust/WASM)

[matteo1782]

Hi HN,

I built EdgeVec, a vector database that runs entirely in the browser. It implements HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) graphs for approximate nearest neighbor search.

Performance: - Sub-millisecond search at 100k vectors (768 dimensions, k=10) - 148 KB gzipped bundle - 3.6x memory reduction with scalar quantization

Use cases: browser extensions with semantic search, local-first apps, privacy-preserving RAG.

Technical: Written in Rust, compiled to WASM. Uses AVX2 SIMD on native, simd128 on WASM. IndexedDB for browser persistence.

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/edgevec GitHub: https://github.com/matte1782/edgevec

This is an alpha release. Main limitations: build time not optimized, no delete operations yet.

Would love feedback from the community!

[rokoss21]

Bringing HNSW graphs to the browser is an interesting approach. The 3.6x memory reduction through quantization is significant. Curious how this compares to other in-browser vector libraries in terms of search latency vs memory trade-offs.

[matteo1782]

Hey thanks for taking the time to read this. I will post new info soon including comparison to other in-browser libraries with benchmarks in v 0.3.0

[matteo1782]

https://github.com/matte1782/edgevec/blob/main/docs/benchmar...