Proxyma Desktop

Semantic search and AI chat over your own documents, running entirely on your own machine. No account, no server, no cloud.

What Proxyma Desktop is

Proxyma indexes the folders and systems you connect and answers questions about them, citing the documents it used.

There is no sign-in and your documents are never uploaded. With a local AI model, nothing you type or index leaves the machine, except the words of the agent's web searches and the pages it opens, what it asks the systems you connect, feedback you choose to send, and, with diagnostics on, an answer you rate and its question.

Installing

Windows

1. Download proxyma-x64-v<version>.exe from the releases page.
2. Run it and accept the End User License Agreement. The installer is small.
3. Make sure you are online, then launch Proxyma from the Start menu.
4. On the first start, Proxyma downloads the rest of itself, about 650 MB, with a progress bar. It then sets up its Python environment, which takes about a minute.
5. Proxyma opens in its own application window. Later starts need no internet connection.

If the download stops, start Proxyma again; it continues where it stopped. Every file is checked against the release's signed checksums before it is installed. Behind a company proxy, Proxyma uses the Windows proxy settings or HTTPS_PROXY, and the certificate authorities Windows trusts.

Linux

Proxyma ships as a small .deb package for Ubuntu and Debian, and downloads the rest on its first start. See Proxyma Desktop on Linux for installing, file locations and updating; the rest of this page applies unchanged.

macOS

Not yet released.

What it needs

First run

1. Choose an AI provider in Settings → AI Providers. Nothing works until one is reachable. Then choose the chat model in Settings → Agents and the embedding model in Settings → Search; the AI Providers page lists what is left.
2. Add a folder in Sources → Connect → Local Folder. Start with a small one.
3. Ask a question. If the answer cites your document, setup is complete.

Choosing an AI provider

Proxyma needs two models, which can come from different providers:

Choose the chat model in Settings → Agents and the embedding model in Settings → Search.

Fully local

Install Ollama and point Proxyma at http://localhost:11434. Nothing you index or ask leaves your machine, except the words of the agent's web searches (sent to DuckDuckGo unless you configure another search service) and the pages it opens, what it asks the systems you connect, feedback you choose to send, and, with diagnostics on, an answer you rate and its question. Expect slower responses and lower answer quality than hosted models.

Hosted

Paste an API key for Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, Mistral, Azure OpenAI or Google. Answers are better, but the passages relevant to each question are sent to that provider.

Seeing what it costs

Settings → Usage & Cost shows what model calls cost over the period you choose: a chart over time, and totals by provider, model and service. Logs, below it, lists every call: when it ran, which part of the product asked for it, the model, the tokens - cache writes and reads included - and what it cost. Clear log deletes every recorded call; the monthly spending limit counts them, so this month is counted again from zero.

Costs are estimated from the rates you set on the provider, not taken from your provider's bill. A model with no rate configured counts as $0 and is marked.

Adding documents

1. For Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket or SVN, add a connection under Settings → Connections: a name, the server URL and your access token (for SVN, your user name and password). Add one per server; the first of each kind is the default.
2. For a network share, add a Network share connection under Settings → Connections: the file server, and your domain user name and password. Only files your account can open are indexed, and only on that server.
3. Open Sources → Connect and choose the source type.
4. Provide the details below.

For Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket or SVN, choose the connection when you connect; the default is preselected. To move a source to another connection, open its Configure dialog. Each connection has its own switches for whether the assistant may read and write through it.

For a folder, an SVN repository or a network share, choose which file types to index when you connect it, or later in its Configure dialog.

SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and Outlook need a Microsoft 365 organization, so they are part of Enterprise Server and are not offered on Desktop or Home Server.

Supported formats: PDF; Word, Excel and PowerPoint (.docx, .xlsx, .xls, .pptx and their macro-enabled versions); Outlook .msg; EPUB; CSV, Markdown, plain text and HTML; C and C++ source; shell, batch and PowerShell scripts; and embedded-software and AUTOSAR files (.arxml, .dbc, .a2l, linker scripts and assembly). Save older .doc and .ppt files as .docx and .pptx first. Tables in PDFs are extracted as tables. Scanned PDFs need OCR: choose an OCR model in Settings → Conversion. On Windows you can choose the Tesseract engine there instead; it is installed with Proxyma, works offline and reads English and Vietnamese (set Tesseract Languages to eng+vie for both). On Linux, see Scanned documents and OCR.

Credentials are encrypted at rest. On Windows the key is protected by DPAPI and tied to your Windows account; on Linux it is a file only your account can read (see the Linux page).

Watching it work

Each document goes through detection, download, conversion and embedding. Large folders take a while, especially with a local embedding model. A failed document does not stop the rest.

Re-syncing processes only what changed.

Closing the window is not quitting

Proxyma keeps running in the background after you close its window, with an icon in the system tray. Indexing and scheduled work continue.

Using Proxyma

Asking questions

Type a question in plain language. Proxyma answers from relevant indexed passages and shows which documents it used. If nothing relevant is indexed, it says so instead of guessing.

Conversations

Chats are saved on your machine. A hosted AI provider receives the conversation to answer it. Rating an answer sends that answer and its question anonymously, only if Settings → About → Send diagnostics to Proxyma is on.

Search

Keyword and meaning-based matching run together, so both an exact error code and a vague description can find the right document.

The knowledge graph

Proxyma can extract the things documents mention - components, services, parameters, people - and the relationships between them into a graph. A thing mentioned in several files becomes one node.

It is off by default. Turn it on in both places:

1. In Settings → Search, switch knowledge-graph extraction on and choose the extraction model. Without a model, nothing is extracted.
2. If extraction keeps timing out, raise Extraction timeout in the same place. A model running on your own machine often needs several minutes per passage.
3. In a source's settings, turn on Build a knowledge graph. What the source has already indexed is extracted in the background. Nothing is re-indexed. Only sources turned on are extracted.

Turning it off deletes that source's graph. Its index and search stay as they are.

To view the graph, open a source and click the graph icon in its header:

• Larger, brighter points have more connections.
• Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, shift-drag to pan.
• Click a point to select it and show its links; click a linked point to move to it.
• Use the controls at the top left to set how many relationships out to show, the spacing, auto-rotation, and to reset the view.
• Stars sets how many points to draw, most connected first. A large source is clearer and faster with a few hundred; raise it to see the long tail.
• A large graph is drawn as it loads, most connected first, so you can read it before it has finished loading.

Turning it off for a source deletes what that source added to the graph. Anything another source also contributed stays.

Connecting other tools

Editors and AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol can search your indexed documents. Search API and MCP has a configuration to paste into your editor.

Your license

Proxyma Desktop has a free Community tier and paid Personal and Professional tiers. Each paid tier is a one-time purchase for one installation, with no subscription or renewal.

User accounts, roles and single sign-on are not in any desktop tier; they belong to Enterprise Server. An Enterprise license is refused by Proxyma Desktop.

The free trial

A new installation starts a 30-day trial of Professional by itself. It needs no key or card, and starts the first time Proxyma can reach our license server; until then it tries again every few hours. Settings → License shows the day it ends.

• Each computer gets one trial. Reinstalling inside the 30 days keeps the same trial and end date; reinstalling later does not start a new one.
• When it ends, Proxyma continues on Community. Activate a Personal or Professional key at any time to keep the paid features.

Where your license key comes from

Buy on the pricing page at proxyma.ai. Lemon Squeezy is the merchant: it charges any applicable tax and sends your receipt. Your license key is in that receipt email, and also on their My Orders page.

Activating

1. Connect to the internet. Activation needs it once.
2. Open Settings → License.
3. Enter your license key.

After activation, Proxyma re-checks the license in the background every few hours; this is how a refunded or revoked license stops working. A failed check never blocks you:

• For 14 days without a successful check, nothing changes. A banner asks you to get online during the last few days.
• After 14 days, Proxyma runs with Community tier features until a check succeeds. No indexed data or settings are lost.
• When a check succeeds, your paid features return with nothing to re-enter.

The check sends only your license key and a random installation identifier, plus your computer's name at activation. It never sends document content, hardware details, usage data or searches.

The Community tier needs no license and makes none of these calls.

Moving to another computer

1. On the old computer, open Settings → License → Release, then Confirm. That copy returns to the Community tier.
2. Activate the same key on the new computer.

If the old computer is unavailable, contact support with your license key to release it.

Updates

Settings → Updates shows your version, the last check, a button to check now, and update history.

Windows and Linux builds update in place:

• Proxyma checks for a new release on the schedule below (by default, at start and then daily), and downloads only the parts that changed, in the background.
• Every download is verified against the release's signed checksums; a mismatch is deleted, not installed.
• When an update is ready, Proxyma tells you and waits. Choose Restart and install to apply it.
• If the new version fails to start, Proxyma goes back to the previous version by itself.
• Your index, conversations, settings and credentials are not touched.

Deciding how often, or not at all

Moving your settings

Settings → Import & Export copies your configuration to another Proxyma installation as one JSON file. It is not a backup: conversations and documents are not in it, and the index is not in it.

Exporting

1. Under What to include, tick the groups to export. They are named after the Settings tabs.
2. To take credentials along, keep Include credentials, encrypted with a passphrase ticked and enter a passphrase of at least 12 characters. It cannot be recovered. Untick it to leave credentials out.
3. Click Export configuration.

Importing

1. If the file was exported with credentials, enter its passphrase first.
2. Click Choose file. For a file with credentials, then click Read this file.
3. Untick any group you do not want, and check the list of what would change.
4. Click Import it. If Network changed, restart when asked.

An import only adds and updates. It never deletes or resets anything, and a provider, skill or connection whose name already exists here is kept as it is.

Your license, appearance and each connection's Read and Write switches are never exported. An imported connection starts with Read on and Write off.

Where your data lives

Back up the Proxyma folder to keep your index and chat history. Losing it means reindexing, and saved credentials and your activated license become unreadable. Your documents are not lost.

Troubleshooting

It will not start

Check that antivirus or endpoint protection is not blocking Proxyma's executables in the installation directory or in %LOCALAPPDATA%\proxyma\parts\.

If the first start stops while downloading, check that this computer can reach GitHub, then start Proxyma again.

"No AI provider is responding"

Open Settings → AI Providers. For Ollama, open http://localhost:11434 in a browser and confirm it responds.

A company AI service fails with a certificate error

Proxyma trusts the certificate authorities your operating system trusts. If the error says PKIX path building failed, ask your IT team to install the company's root certificate on this computer, then restart Proxyma.

Indexing is very slow

Embedding is the bottleneck, especially with a local model on a laptop CPU. Use a hosted embedding provider, index fewer folders, or leave it running; it resumes where it left off.

Search does not find something I know is there

1. Check in Sources that the document finished indexing.
2. For scanned documents, results depend on OCR quality.
3. If you changed the embedding model, reindex.

Answers are wrong or vague

Proxyma answers only from what it has indexed. Add better source material, or use a larger chat model.

My license key is rejected

Proxyma stopped working after I went offline

Search, chat and indexed documents work offline indefinitely. If one stopped, a connector or cloud AI provider needs the network.

Paid features fall back to Community tier limits after 14 days without a successful license check. Connect to the internet and press Try again in the banner, or reopen Proxyma. Everything returns immediately.

The banner says my license was revoked

This usually means the order was refunded or charged back. If you did not request a refund, email contact@proxyma.ai with your license key.

Uninstalling

Your own documents are not touched either way.

Windows

1. Uninstall Proxyma from Add or remove programs. It always removes the downloaded application parts. To remove your index and conversations too, answer Yes when it offers to delete your data.
2. To remove skills and conversation files, delete %USERPROFILE%\.proxyma\.

Linux

1. Run sudo apt remove proxyma. The downloaded application parts stay in ~/.local/share/proxyma/.
2. To remove them and your data, delete ~/.local/share/proxyma/ and ~/.proxyma/.