Installation

Reflex is a local-first code search engine that combines trigram indexing for full-text search with Tree-sitter parsing for symbol extraction and static analysis for dependency tracking. Unlike symbol-only tools, Reflex finds every occurrence of a pattern with deterministic, repeatable results.

Install

Choose your preferred installer:

# npm (recommended — includes prebuilt binaries)
npm install -g reflex-search

# Shell installer (Linux, macOS)
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/reflex-search/reflex/releases/latest/download/reflex-search-installer.sh | sh

# PowerShell installer (Windows)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/reflex-search/reflex/releases/latest/download/reflex-search-installer.ps1 | iex"

# cargo (builds from source, requires Rust toolchain)
cargo install reflex-search

The npm package and the shell/PowerShell installers download a prebuilt binary for Linux and macOS (x86_64 and arm64) or Windows (x86_64). The installers place rfx in $CARGO_HOME/bin (usually ~/.cargo/bin).

Verify the installation

rfx --version

You should see output like rfx 2.0.0.

Project setup

Navigate to your project root and run:

rfx index

This creates a .reflex/ directory containing the search index. Add it to your .gitignore:

echo '.reflex/' >> .gitignore

That’s it — Reflex is ready. The index is fully local; no data leaves your machine.

Upgrading from 1.x

Reflex 2.0 changes the on-disk index formats (trigrams.bin V4, content.bin V2), so every existing .reflex/ index needs a one-time full rebuild. Run this once in each indexed project after upgrading:

rfx index --force

An index written by Reflex 1.7.2 or later records the version that wrote it, and a plain rfx index from 2.0 refuses to update it (this .reflex/ was written by reflex 1.7.2 …). --force clears .reflex/ and rebuilds from scratch. Because it clears the whole directory, .reflex/config.toml is recreated with defaults — copy it somewhere first if you customized it.

What’s inside .reflex/

File	Purpose
meta.db	SQLite metadata: file list with per-file fingerprints (size, mtime, blake3 hash), symbol cache, dependency graph, stats
meta.db-wal, meta.db-shm	SQLite write-ahead log files, present while meta.db is open (it runs in WAL mode)
trigrams.bin	Trigram inverted index for fast full-text search (memory-mapped)
content.bin	Full file contents for result display (memory-mapped)
config.toml	Project-level configuration
index.lock	Workspace lock file, locked while an index write is in progress
indexing.lock, indexing.status	Lock and progress file for the background symbol pass (rfx index status reads the status)
trigram_temp/	Transient: partial trigram batches during a large rebuild, removed when indexing finishes

System requirements

• Node.js 14+ (for npm install) or Rust 1.89+ (for cargo install)
• Works on Linux, macOS, and Windows
• No external services or network access required

Next steps

Head to the Quick Start to index your first project and run queries, or see Configuration to customize Reflex for your workflow.