Architecture

TARX is a local-first AI system built on four services running on your machine.

Service Map


┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Your Machine               │
│                                             │
│  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  │
│  │ Daemon   │  │ Mesh     │  │ Embed    │  │
│  │ :11435   │  │ :11436   │  │ :11437   │  │
│  │ Local AI │  │ Rust     │  │ nomic    │  │
│  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  │
│       │                            │        │
│  ┌──────────┐                ┌──────────┐   │
│  │Cognitive │                │ SQLite   │   │
│  │ :11438   │                │memory.db │   │
│  └──────────┘                └──────────┘   │
│                                             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │
    MCP Protocol
         │
┌─────────────────┐
│  Claude / TARX  │
│  (any client)   │
└─────────────────┘

Daemon (port 11435)

The inference daemon runs TARX’s fine-tuned local model. It handles chat completions, memory storage, and space management.

Model: ~5GB on disk, 18 tok/s on Apple Silicon
Context window: 32K tokens
API: OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions

Mesh (port 11436)

A Rust binary that connects your node to the TARX mesh network. Other TARX users can contribute inference capacity — encrypted, opt-in.

Binary: 4.6MB standalone
Protocol: Custom peer discovery + encrypted routing
Status: V1 — stub economy, no real credits

Embeddings (port 11437)

Runs nomic-embed-text-v1.5 for RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). Every file, memory, and conversation chunk is embedded for semantic search.

Dimensions: 768
Chunk size: 512 characters, 128 overlap
Storage: knowledge_embeddings table in SQLite

Cognitive Engine (port 11438)

Tracks your cognitive state across sessions — focus depth, decision fatigue, context readiness. Feeds the TarxTicker and adapts Claude’s response style.

Scoring: context_switch_rate, focus_depth, decision_velocity
Styles: concise, detailed, step-by-step, collaborative
Window: 2-hour rolling session analysis

Data Storage

All data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/tarx/memory.db (SQLite). Files are stored on disk at ~/Library/Application Support/tarx/files/.

Nothing is uploaded. Nothing leaves your machine.