2.1 Prerequisites ¶
- A Linux host you control. A small VPS (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM) is
enough. The author runs his production instance on a $5/month VPS.
- Root or sudo access on that host.
- Java 17 or newer. OpenJDK is fine.
- PostgreSQL 16 or newer, with the
pgvector extension
package available.
- A domain name pointing at the host’s public IP, and the ability
to obtain a TLS certificate for it. The setup walkthrough uses Let’s
Encrypt.
- An OpenAI API key for embeddings, or another provider’s key if
you intend to swap providers (see Embedding Migration). A
self-hosted embedding model is also fine but requires a bit more
plumbing.
- An MCP-capable LLM client. Claude Desktop is the easiest place
to start.