// Search & vector stores
annoyv1.17.3
Approximate Nearest Neighbors in C++/Python optimized for memory usage and loading/saving to disk
Open source No commits in 6+ months For agents
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
annoy is approximate Nearest Neighbors in C++/Python optimized for memory usage and loading/saving to disk.
Good for: Developers who want their agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor…) to search & vector stores.
Not for: teams that need active fixes (no commits in the last 6 months).
01How to start
- 1Read the official README for requirements and permissions.
- 2Install it from the official package registry:
pip install annoy - 3Tell your agent the command exists (e.g. in AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md) so it knows when to call it.
02Alternatives & comparison
Compare side by side → pgvector Open-source vector similarity search for Postgres ★ 23k lancedb Developer-friendly OSS embedded retrieval library for multimodal AI. Search More; Manage Less. ★ 12k infinity The AI-native database built for LLM applications, providing incredibly fast hybrid search of dense vector, sparse vector, tensor (multi-vector), and full-text. ★ 4.7k USearch Fast Open-Source Search & Clustering engine × for Vectors & Arbitrary Objects × in C++, C, Python, JavaScript, Rust, Java, Objective-C, Swift, C#, GoLang, and Wolfram 🔍 ★ 4.3k weaviate Weaviate is an open-source vector database that stores both objects and vectors, allowing for the combination of vector search with structured filtering with the fault tolerance and scalability of a cloud-native database. ★ 17k