Skip to content

Feature request: Support hosted/cloud embedding providers (OpenAI, OpenRouter, etc.) #229

@daronyondem

Description

@daronyondem

Hey! Love that qmd is all-local, but it would be great to have an optional cloud embedding backend for cases where:

  • The local machine lacks GPU (CPU-only embedding is slow)
  • Higher quality embeddings are desired (e.g. OpenAI text-embedding-3-small/large)
  • Users already have API keys for OpenRouter, OpenAI, etc.

Proposed approach:

  • Add an optional config (env var or config file) like QMD_EMBED_PROVIDER=openai and QMD_EMBED_API_KEY=sk-...
  • Default remains local GGUF models (no breaking change)
  • When configured, qmd embed calls the hosted API instead of running the local model
  • Providers to consider: OpenAI, OpenRouter, Cohere, Voyage AI

This would keep qmd's simplicity while unlocking better embeddings for users who want them. The local-first default stays intact.

Thanks for building this!

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions