Providers

Remind uses embedding providers for semantic retrieval. By default, it uses local embeddings — no API keys needed.

Provider matrix

Provider	Embeddings	API key required
Local	Yes (default)	No
OpenAI	Yes	Yes
Azure OpenAI	Yes	Yes
Ollama	Yes	No (local server)

Local (default)

Uses fastembed with ONNX for fast local inference. No API keys or external calls.

Config file

{
  "embedding_provider": "local",
  "local": {
    "embedding_model": "sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2"
  }
}

Environment

EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=local
LOCAL_EMBEDDING_MODEL=sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2

Setting	Default
embedding_model	sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2

This is the default — no configuration needed to use it.

OpenAI

Higher-quality embeddings via OpenAI API.

Config file

{
  "embedding_provider": "openai",
  "openai": {
    "api_key": "sk-...",
    "embedding_model": "text-embedding-3-small"
  }
}

Environment

OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=openai

Setting	Default
api_key	—
base_url	null (OpenAI default)
embedding_model	text-embedding-3-small

Azure OpenAI

Embeddings via Azure.

Config file

{
  "embedding_provider": "azure_openai",
  "azure_openai": {
    "api_key": "...",
    "base_url": "https://your-resource.openai.azure.com",
    "embedding_deployment_name": "text-embedding-3-small",
    "embedding_size": 1536
  }
}

Environment

AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=...
AZURE_OPENAI_API_BASE_URL=https://your-resource.openai.azure.com
AZURE_OPENAI_EMBEDDING_DEPLOYMENT_NAME=text-embedding-3-small
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=azure_openai

Setting	Default
api_key	—
base_url	— (/openai/v1 appended automatically)
embedding_deployment_name	—
embedding_size	1536

Ollama (local server)

Local embeddings via Ollama. Requires Ollama running:

ollama pull nomic-embed-text

Config file

{
  "embedding_provider": "ollama",
  "ollama": {
    "url": "http://localhost:11434",
    "embedding_model": "nomic-embed-text"
  }
}

Environment

OLLAMA_URL=http://localhost:11434
OLLAMA_EMBEDDING_MODEL=nomic-embed-text
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=ollama

Setting	Default
url	http://localhost:11434
embedding_model	nomic-embed-text

Choosing a provider

Use case	Recommended
Getting started	Local (default)
Higher quality retrieval	OpenAI
Enterprise / compliance	Azure OpenAI
Air-gapped / privacy	Local or Ollama

The local provider works well for most use cases. Switch to OpenAI or another remote provider if you need higher-quality embeddings for large knowledge bases.

Switching providers

When switching embedding providers, re-embed every record type so the database does not retain vectors from the previous embedding space:

remind clear-embeddings
remind re-embed --all

This is because different providers produce different embedding dimensions and vector spaces.