Sift 🩺

Stop searching. Start sifting.

Sift is a privacy-first, local-only clinical intelligence engine designed for modern medical offices. It acts as an automated "watchdog," monitoring local folders for incoming clinical data—EPIC exports, FHIR JSONs, and scanned PDFs—and synthesizing them into actionable clinical summaries using local LLM inference.

🌟 Key Features

• Zero-Cloud Architecture: All processing happens on the local machine. No data ever leaves the office network, ensuring native HIPAA compliance by design.
• Automated Ingestion: Monitors designated Windows directories for new files. Drop a PDF or FHIR export in, and Sift begins processing immediately.
• Multi-Source Synthesis: Intelligently maps data from structured (FHIR, HL7) and unstructured (Clinical PDFs) sources into a unified patient timeline.
• Single-Binary Distribution: Orchestrates a Rust core, a Node.js orchestrator, and a local inference engine (llama-server) in a single, lightweight Windows application.
• Clinical Guardrails: Provides evidence-backed summaries with confidence scores and direct links to source documentation.

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🏗 Architecture

Sift is built on a Polyglot Sidecar Architecture to leverage the best of native performance and high-level data processing:

• Host (Rust/Tauri): Manages the Windows lifecycle, system tray, and high-performance file system watching.
• Orchestrator (Node.js Sidecar): Handles complex business logic, PDF parsing, and SQLite data management.
• Inference (llama-server): Provides an OpenAI-compatible API for local LLMs (Llama 3, Mistral) running on the local CPU/GPU.
• Storage (SQLite): An embedded, relational database for persistent patient history and audit logs.

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Documentation

Full guides live in docs/:

• Quick start · Installation · Development
• Configuration · Architecture · Build and release
• Troubleshooting · Security and compliance · Testing

Getting started (developers)

Prerequisites

• Rust (latest stable — run rustup update stable)
• Node.js v18+
• Ollama running locally with a compatible model (e.g. ollama run gemma4:26b)
• WebView2 (pre-installed on most Windows 10/11 systems)

Clone, install, run

git clone https://github.com/fleXRPL/sift.git
cd sift
node sift.mjs deps    # installs all npm dependencies (root + frontend + backend)
node sift.mjs check   # pre-flight: verifies Node, Rust, Ollama, and configured model
node sift.mjs run     # starts Tauri dev shell + Vite + backend in one command

See docs/QUICKSTART.md for the full step-by-step checklist.

sift.mjs CLI reference

Command	What it does
node sift.mjs run	Start the full dev stack (Tauri + Vite + backend)
node sift.mjs check	Pre-flight check: Node, Rust, deps, Ollama, model
node sift.mjs deps	Install all npm dependencies
node sift.mjs debug	Start with verbose logging
node sift.mjs stop	Kill all running dev processes
node sift.mjs package	Bundle the backend into a Windows sidecar .exe

Tests and CI

npm test                        # run all backend + frontend tests
npm test --prefix backend       # backend only (Jest)
npm test --prefix frontend      # frontend only (Vitest)

Continuous integration runs on every push and PR via .github/workflows/ci.yml — covers backend (Jest), frontend (Vitest + build), and Rust (cargo check). Details: docs/TESTING.md.

Creating a release

Push a version tag to trigger the automated Windows installer build:

# 1. Bump version in tauri.conf.json, Cargo.toml, and package.json (keep in sync)
git tag v0.2.0
git push origin v0.2.0

GitHub Actions builds a signed NSIS .exe installer on windows-latest and attaches it to a GitHub Release automatically. See docs/BUILD-AND-RELEASE.md for full details, manual build steps, and code-signing setup.

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Project structure

sift/
├── .cursor/
│   ├── rules/      # Cursor coding rules (TypeScript, Rust, security, testing)
│   └── skills/     # On-demand healthcare skills (PHI, HIPAA, EMR, CDSS)
├── .github/
│   ├── workflows/ci.yml       # CI: backend, frontend, cargo check
│   └── workflows/release.yml  # Release: Windows NSIS installer on version tag
├── docs/           # Documentation (start at docs/README.md)
├── frontend/       # Vite + React + Tailwind UI
├── backend/        # Node orchestrator (Express, SQLite, ingest, LLM client)
├── src-tauri/      # Tauri host: tray, folder watch, sidecar lifecycle
├── samples/        # Sample FHIR, HL7, and PDF files for manual testing
├── img/            # Brand assets (icon source for Tauri)
├── sift.mjs        # Developer CLI (run / check / deps / debug / stop / package)
└── data/           # Local SQLite (sift.db), created at runtime

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Contributing

See docs/CONTRIBUTING.md. Testing strategy and CI expectations are outlined in docs/TESTING.md.

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📜 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.