Ingence#
Ingence is a read-only indexing and inference engine for scientific filesystems, with a local Dashboard for exploring them.
It reads files’ names, metadata and contents where they already sit, and interprets them through two editable, versioned sources: a Dictionary, which defines what the words in names and files mean, and a Rulebook, the engine’s interpretive logic, which turns that evidence into proposals about how files relate. The Dashboard lets you search and browse what is there, what could not be read, and what the engine concluded and why; where the rules cannot decide, it asks you.
It runs entirely on your computer. No language model or outside service reaches a conclusion, and no account or network connection is needed.
Pre-alpha. Ingence 0.3.0 runs from start to finish and is changed often. Install it with uv, pipx or pip (Install), and send feedback to hello@ingence.org.
One folder, and how Ingence placed it
an invented example20261012_Atlas_HeLa_DAPI-GFP/holding 20261012_HeLa_DMSO_001.tif and other filesRead where it sits. Its name, size and times were recorded; nothing was written.
20261012a date, 12 October 2026Atlasnot in the shipped DictionaryHeLaa cell lineDAPIa stainGFPa fluorescent proteinTaken as one experiment.
20261012 beside the project name Atlas and the words HeLa, DAPI and GFP.What Atlas means. The Dictionary does not hold it, so Ingence records it as unknown and asks, and does not assume.
Three principles
Your files are only read.
Ingence never moves, renames, deletes or writes to the files it reads, and it never runs code it finds among them.
Every conclusion names its rule.
The rules are written in plain words, versioned, and yours to read, tune or switch off. Each conclusion names the rule that made it.
It says when it does not know.
Not known, not yet looked at, and in conflict are three different answers. Ingence keeps them apart and does not guess.
Start here#
Put Ingence on your computer with uv, pip, pipx or conda.
Read a small practice folder from the terminal, then look at what Ingence found.
How Ingence thinks, what it does with your data, and what a domain pack is.
Every command, option and setting, generated from the code.
Who it is for, and the project#
Pages for a researcher with their own data, a laboratory head, and research IT.
What the first public version contains.
The technical report, how Ingence is evaluated, and the datasets planned.
Who makes Ingence, who supports it, its license and how to cite it.
Where to ask, report a problem and contribute.