Escruta - Core

"Think, ask, learn"

Escruta Core is the core engine of the Escruta research assistant platform. Built with Java and Spring Boot, it handles the business logic, document processing, AI orchestration, and persistent storage for your research data.

Important

This backend service is a central part of the Escruta ecosystem. It requires a PostgreSQL database with the pgvector extension and access to an OpenAI-compatible API to function correctly.

Technology Stack

• Runtime: Java 21 with Gradle for build management.
• Framework: Spring Boot 3.5 for robust backend development.
• AI Integration: Spring AI for seamless interaction with Large Language Models.
• Database: PostgreSQL with pgvector for search and vector similarity.
• Security: Spring Security (OAuth 2.0 Resource Server Opaque Token) for stateless authentication.
• Object Mapping: Project Lombok to reduce boilerplate code.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 21 or higher.
• PostgreSQL (version 15 or higher) with pgvector extension.
• An OpenAI-compatible API.

Installation

• ./gradlew bootRun - Start the development server

The backend service will be available at localhost:8080 by default.

Development Scripts

• ./gradlew bootRun - Start development server
• ./gradlew build - Build the application
• ./gradlew clean - Clean the build directory

Configuration

Environment Variables

The application can be configured using environment variables. These can be set in your shell or passed to the application at runtime.

Variable	Description	Default
ESCRUTA_PORT	Backend port	8080
ESCRUTA_DATABASE_URL	JDBC URL for the database	jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/escruta?user=postgres&password=1234
ESCRUTA_AI_BASE_URL	Base URL for the AI provider	(Required)
ESCRUTA_AI_API_KEY	API Key for the AI provider	(Required)
ESCRUTA_AI_MODEL	AI model to use for chat	(Required)
ESCRUTA_AI_EMBEDDING_MODEL	AI model to use for embeddings	(Required)
ESCRUTA_AI_EMBEDDING_DIMENSIONS	Dimensions of the embedding vectors	768
ESCRUTA_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Allowed origins for CORS	http://localhost:5173

See application.yml for the full list of configuration options.