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RAG & Knowledge Systems

Pixelrag

An open-source Python library and CLI pipeline for visual retrieval-augmented generation. It renders documents and web pages as images, indexes visual content and retrieves screenshot tiles rather than relying only on extracted text.

Explore the practical guide ↓

Independent OpenViST project profile, based on linked sources.

Pixelrag — OpenViST project profile in RAG & Knowledge Systems.
OpenViST project illustration. See the linked sources for product details.
Understand the project

Practical overview

When it fits

Use Pixelrag when the information needed by a retrieval or question-answering system is partly visual or spatial, such as in tables, charts, diagrams and structured page layouts that ordinary HTML or text parsing may lose.

Who it is for

  • Developers building multimodal RAG systems
  • Teams searching PDFs, web pages, forms, reports or dashboards where layout matters
  • Users needing screenshot-aware workflows for Claude Code or opencode
  • Researchers and engineers working with visual retrieval and vision-language models

Documented uses

  • Render web pages, PDFs and other documents into screenshot tiles
  • Search visual indexes using the appearance and layout of content
  • Preserve tables, charts, infographics and page structure during retrieval
  • Build visual document search and multimodal question-answering pipelines
  • Query the documented hosted index of Wikipedia pages
Before you choose

Requirements & limits

The project is documented as open source under the Apache-2.0 license. The repository documents Linux, Windows, macOS, CLI and self-hosted use, plus a hosted API with a pre-built Wikipedia index that requires no API key according to the project README.

  • Pixelrag retrieves rendered images rather than text chunks, making visual structure a central part of search.
  • The pipeline uses screenshot tiles and a Qwen3-VL-Embedding model fine-tuned on screenshot data.
  • A hosted index of 8.28 million Wikipedia pages is documented, while the pipeline itself is described as general-purpose.
  • The project provides a standalone pixelshot capture command and additional pipeline stages through the pixelrag command.
  • Claude Code and opencode integrations are documented for screenshot-based browsing workflows.

Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.

Source-based practical guide

Render a page into visual tiles

Create screenshot tiles from a web page or document with Pixelrag’s documented capture command.

Before you start

  • Python package installation access
  • A web page or document to render
  • The pixelshot command available after installing pixelrag

Steps

  1. Install Pixelrag with the command below.

    Documented command
    pip install pixelrag

  2. Run pixelshot with a page or document and an output directory.

  3. Use the generated image tiles as the visual input for the next indexing or search stage.

Expected outcome

The selected page or document is rendered as screenshot tiles for visual retrieval workflows.

Guide limitations

  • This recipe documents capture only; it does not cover indexing or running a custom search corpus.
  • The source documents the command for pages and PDFs but does not specify further rendering configuration here.
Documentation 1 ↗
COMPARE OPTIONS

Compare options for Retrieval-augmented applications

These projects document a common task and share a project role. This is a source-based comparison, not an execution benchmark or a guarantee of interchangeability.

ProjectDocumented purposePlatformAccess and requirements
PixelragRender web pages, PDFs and other documents into screenshot tilesCLI, Linux, macOS, Self-hostedThe project is documented as open source under the Apache-2.0 license. The repository documents Linux, Windows, macOS, CLI and self-hosted use, plus a hosted API with a pre-built Wikipedia index that requires no API key according to the project README.
LangsearchCrawl website or local data for a knowledge base.CLI, Self-hosted, Server
Hybrid Search RagCombine document retrieval and language-model generation in a configurable workflow.
Evidence and transparency

Sources & review

Official repository ↗
Source record details
Source availability
Active
Sources checked
1 October 2026
Original website title
StarTrail-org/PixelRAG · Official homepage title · retained in its source language
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