allourthings-core

Rust storage library for AllOurThings — an AI-powered inventory system.

Storage format

Each item is a directory containing a single JSON file:

<data-dir>/items/<slug>-<id>/item.json

The directory name is <slug>-<id> where <slug> is a URL-safe lowercase version of the item name (max 50 chars) and <id> is an 8-character lowercase hex string.

Required fields: id, name, created_at, updated_at. Well-known optional fields include category, subcategory, tags, and attachments. Any additional fields are preserved and round-trip without modification.

Attachment files (PDFs, images, etc.) are stored alongside item.json in the same directory.

Query cache

CatalogStore supports an optional SQLite query cache for efficient filtering.

The cache is write-through — every mutation (add_item, update_item, delete_item, and the attachment operations) updates the cache immediately. Call refresh() to sync changes written externally (e.g. by another process or a mobile app), and rebuild_cache() to fully repopulate from disk if the cache becomes corrupt.

| Platform | Default location | |---|---| | macOS | ~/Library/Caches/allourthings/<hash>/ | | Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\allourthings\<hash>\ | | Linux | ~/.cache/allourthings/<hash>/ |

The <hash> is a SHA-256 of the data directory path, so multiple vaults each get their own isolated cache.

The cache schema indexes category, subcategory, and tags for SQL filtering, and stores the full item as a JSON blob for everything else. All three are optional on any item — items missing them are stored and returned normally, they just won't appear when those specific filters are applied. Keeping the indexed columns to only those actually queried means new well-known fields can be added without any schema migration.

Running tests

cargo test

This runs two test suites:

• Unit tests (in src/) — cover the item schema, slug generation, ID generation, storage CRUD, attachments, and cache write-through behaviour
• Conformance tests (tests/conformance.rs) — assert against the shared fixtures in test-fixtures/catalog/. These define the canonical storage format that all AllOurThings clients (MCP server, iOS app, etc.) must honour

License

MIT