browser-gnn

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2 months ago

BrowserGNN by Dr. Lee - The World's First Comprehensive Graph Neural Network Library for the Browser

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graph-neural-network gnn gcn gat graphsage machine-learning deep-learning webgpu webassembly browser client-side-ml privacy-preserving typescript

BrowserGNN by Dr. Lee

The World's First Comprehensive Graph Neural Network Library for the Browser

What is BrowserGNN?

BrowserGNN is a groundbreaking JavaScript/TypeScript library that brings the power of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) directly to web browsers. Until now, GNN inference required server-side computation with frameworks like PyTorch Geometric or DGL. BrowserGNN changes this paradigm by enabling client-side graph learning with zero server dependencies.

Why is this Novel?

| Traditional GNN | BrowserGNN | |----------------|------------| | Requires Python backend | Pure JavaScript/TypeScript | | Server-side inference | Client-side execution | | Data leaves user's device | Data stays local (privacy!) | | Network latency | Instant inference | | Server costs | Zero infrastructure | | Limited scalability | Scales with user devices |

This is the first library in the world to provide:

Complete GCN, GAT, GraphSAGE, and GIN implementations in pure TypeScript
Full training support with autograd, optimizers, and loss functions
Pre-built education-focused models (Model Zoo)
Model serialization for save/load capabilities
Browser-native tensor operations optimized for graph computations
Sparse matrix operations (COO, CSR formats) for efficient graph processing
A PyTorch Geometric-inspired API that ML engineers will find familiar

Evidence: No Prior Browser-Based GNN Library Exists

We conducted extensive research to verify BrowserGNN's novelty:

| Existing Solution | GNN Support in Browser? | Notes | |-------------------|------------------------|-------| | TensorFlow.js | ❌ No | Open feature request since 2022, still unimplemented | | TF-GNN | ❌ Python only | Requires TensorFlow 2.12+, Linux only | | PyTorch Geometric | ❌ Python/CUDA only | No JavaScript port exists | | Spektral | ❌ Python only | Keras/TensorFlow, server-side | | Brain.js | ❌ No GNN layers | Standard neural networks only | | ONNX Runtime Web | ❌ No GNN ops | General inference, no graph convolutions |

The gap is clear: The Python GNN ecosystem (PyTorch Geometric, DGL, TF-GNN) is mature, but the browser ML ecosystem (TensorFlow.js, ONNX Web, WebLLM) has lacked graph neural network support entirely—until now.

Features

Pure Browser Execution - No server required, runs entirely client-side
Privacy Preserving - Graph data never leaves the user's device
Full Training Support - Autograd, optimizers (SGD, Adam, Adagrad, RMSprop), and loss functions
Model Zoo - Pre-built education-focused models for learning analytics
Model Serialization - Save and load models to JSON or browser storage
WASM Optimized - 8x loop-unrolled kernels for high performance
WebGPU Ready - GPU-accelerated inference via compute shaders
Developer Friendly - Familiar PyTorch Geometric-inspired API
Fully Typed - Complete TypeScript definitions

Documentation

| Document | Description | |----------|-------------| | Tutorial | Step-by-step guide from installation to deployment with custom data | | FAQ | Common questions about training, performance, integration, and privacy | | Roadmap | Development phases, milestones, and future plans |

Supported Layers

| Layer | Description | Paper | Status | |-------|-------------|-------|--------| | GCNConv | Graph Convolutional Network | Kipf & Welling 2017 | ✅ Ready | | GATConv | Graph Attention Network | Velickovic et al. 2018 | ✅ Ready | | SAGEConv | GraphSAGE | Hamilton et al. 2017 | ✅ Ready | | GINConv | Graph Isomorphism Network | Xu et al. 2019 | ✅ Ready | | EdgeConv | Dynamic Graph CNN | Wang et al. 2019 | 🔄 Coming Soon |

Model Zoo

Pre-built models for common use cases:

| Model | Use Case | Description | |-------|----------|-------------| | StudentMasteryPredictor | Knowledge Assessment | Predict student mastery levels across concepts in a curriculum | | LearningPathRecommender | Curriculum Sequencing | Recommend optimal learning paths through prerequisite graphs | | ConceptPrerequisiteMapper | Dependency Analysis | Discover and predict prerequisite relationships between concepts |

import { StudentMasteryPredictor, LearningPathRecommender } from 'browser-gnn';

// Predict student mastery from knowledge graph
const predictor = new StudentMasteryPredictor({ inputFeatures: 11 });
const { mastery, predictions } = await predictor.predict(knowledgeGraph);

// Get personalized learning path recommendations
const recommender = new LearningPathRecommender({ inputFeatures: 11 });
const { recommendations } = await recommender.recommend(curriculum, masteredConcepts);

Installation

mkdir my-gnn-project
cd my-gnn-project
npm init -y
npm install browser-gnn

Or with yarn:

yarn add browser-gnn

Or include via CDN:

<script type="module">
  import { GraphData, GCNConv } from 'https://unpkg.com/browser-gnn/dist/index.js';
</script>

Quick Start (CLI)

The easiest way to get started:

npx browser-gnn init    # Creates a starter file
node gnn-example.mjs    # Run it!

Other CLI commands:

npx browser-gnn         # Show help
npx browser-gnn demo    # Open live demo in browser

Quick Start (Code)

import { GraphData, GCNConv, Sequential, ReLU, Softmax } from 'browser-gnn';

// Create graph data
const graph = new GraphData({
  // Node features: 4 nodes, 3 features each
  x: new Float32Array([
    0.1, 0.2, 0.3,  // Node 0 features
    0.4, 0.5, 0.6,  // Node 1 features
    0.7, 0.8, 0.9,  // Node 2 features
    1.0, 1.1, 1.2,  // Node 3 features
  ]),
  numNodes: 4,
  numFeatures: 3,
  // Edge index in COO format: [source nodes..., target nodes...]
  edgeIndex: new Uint32Array([
    0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 0,  // source nodes
    1, 0, 2, 1, 3, 2, 0, 3,  // target nodes (bidirectional edges)
  ]),
  numEdges: 8,
});

// Build a 3-layer GCN model for node classification
const model = new Sequential([
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 3, outChannels: 16 }),
  new ReLU(),
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 16, outChannels: 8 }),
  new ReLU(),
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 8, outChannels: 2 }),  // 2 output classes
  new Softmax(),
]);

// Run inference
model.eval();
const output = model.forward(graph);

// Output contains class probabilities for each node
console.log('Node predictions:', output.x);
// Shape: [4, 2] - 4 nodes, 2 class probabilities each

Interactive Demo

Run the interactive demo locally:

git clone https://github.com/fenago/BrowserGNN.git
cd BrowserGNN
npm install
npm run example

Then open http://localhost:3333 in your browser.

Understanding the Demo

The demo showcases three different GNN architectures processing the same graph:

The Demo Graph

    [0]----[1]
     | \  / |
     |  \/  |
     |  /\  |
     | /  \ |
    [4]    [2]
      \    /
       \  /
        [3]

5 nodes (labeled 0-4), each with 3 initial features
10 edges representing connections between nodes
This is a typical social network or molecular structure

What Each Demo Shows

1. GCN Demo (Graph Convolutional Network)

Uses symmetric normalization: each node aggregates neighbor features weighted by degree
Formula: h_i' = σ(Σ_j (1/√(d_i·d_j)) · W · h_j)
Best for: Homophilic graphs where connected nodes are similar
Output: Class probabilities showing which class each node likely belongs to

2. GAT Demo (Graph Attention Network)

Learns attention weights: not all neighbors are equally important
Multi-head attention captures different relationship types
Output shows attention-weighted predictions
Best for: Graphs where neighbor importance varies (citation networks, etc.)

3. GraphSAGE Demo

Samples and aggregates neighbor features (mean, max, or pooling)
Designed for inductive learning on unseen nodes
Output shows sampling-based predictions
Best for: Large graphs, dynamic graphs with new nodes

Interpreting the Output

Node 0: Class 0: 0.6234, Class 1: 0.3766
Node 1: Class 0: 0.5891, Class 1: 0.4109
...

Each node gets a probability distribution over classes
Higher probability = model is more confident about that class
In a real application, you'd pick the highest probability as the prediction
Similar nodes (connected in the graph) tend to have similar predictions

Benchmark Results

The benchmark tests inference speed on graphs of increasing size:

10 nodes, 50 nodes, 100 nodes, 500 nodes
Shows average/min/max inference time in milliseconds
Demonstrates that BrowserGNN scales efficiently

Feature Engineering for GNNs

One of the most important aspects of getting good results from Graph Neural Networks is feature engineering. The demo includes real-world examples that showcase why this matters.

The Problem with Naive Features

A common mistake is using one-hot encoding as node features (where each node gets a unique identifier like [1,0,0,...] for node 0, [0,1,0,...] for node 1, etc.). This approach fails because:

No structural information: One-hot features don't encode anything about graph topology
Random initialization: Without training, the GNN has no way to learn meaningful patterns
Poor generalization: Can't transfer to graphs of different sizes

Structural Features: The Key to Good Performance

The Karate Club demos in BrowserGNN use structural features computed from the graph topology itself:

// Features computed for each node using BFS (Breadth-First Search)
const features = {
  closenessToLeader1: 1 / (1 + shortestPathDistance(node, leader1)),
  closenessToLeader2: 1 / (1 + shortestPathDistance(node, leader2)),
  normalizedDegree: degree(node) / maxDegree,
  bias: (distToLeader2 - distToLeader1) / (distToLeader1 + distToLeader2 + 1)
};

| Feature | What It Captures | Why It Helps | |---------|------------------|--------------| | Closeness to Leader 1 | How many hops to reach Mr. Hi | Nodes close to a leader tend to join their faction | | Closeness to Leader 2 | How many hops to reach Officer | Same reasoning for the other faction | | Normalized Degree | How connected a node is | High-degree nodes are often "bridge" members | | Bias | Which leader is closer | Directly encodes the prediction signal |

The BFS Algorithm for Distance Features

// Breadth-First Search to compute shortest path distances
function bfsDistances(adjacencyList, sourceNode) {
  const distances = new Array(numNodes).fill(Infinity);
  distances[sourceNode] = 0;
  const queue = [sourceNode];

  while (queue.length > 0) {
    const current = queue.shift();
    for (const neighbor of adjacencyList[current]) {
      if (distances[neighbor] === Infinity) {
        distances[neighbor] = distances[current] + 1;
        queue.push(neighbor);
      }
    }
  }
  return distances;
}

Real-World Results: Zachary's Karate Club

Using structural features on the famous Karate Club dataset:

| Approach | Accuracy | Why | |----------|----------|-----| | One-hot encoding + random weights | ~47% | No meaningful signal | | Structural features | 92%+ | Encodes community structure |

The Key Insight: In Zachary's 1977 study, members joined the faction whose leader they were closer to in the friendship network. Our structural features directly encode this pattern!

When to Use Structural Features

| Use Case | Recommended Features | |----------|---------------------| | Community Detection | Distance to known community centers, clustering coefficient | | Node Classification | Degree, PageRank, betweenness centrality | | Link Prediction | Common neighbors, Jaccard similarity, Adamic-Adar | | Molecular Graphs | Atom type, bond count, ring membership |

Feature Engineering Best Practices

Start with graph-theoretic features: Degree, centrality measures, local clustering
Add domain knowledge: For social networks, use influence metrics; for molecules, use chemical properties
Normalize features: Scale to similar ranges (0-1 or z-score normalization)
Use BFS for community tasks: Distance to known landmarks is highly predictive
Combine with learned features: Structural features + GNN message passing = powerful representations

Architecture

browser-gnn/
├── src/
│   ├── core/              # Core data structures
│   │   ├── tensor.ts      # Tensor operations (add, mul, matmul, etc.)
│   │   ├── graph.ts       # GraphData class with edge operations
│   │   └── sparse.ts      # Sparse matrix formats (COO, CSR)
│   ├── layers/            # GNN layer implementations
│   │   ├── gcn.ts         # Graph Convolutional Network
│   │   ├── gat.ts         # Graph Attention Network
│   │   └── sage.ts        # GraphSAGE
│   ├── nn/                # Neural network primitives
│   │   ├── module.ts      # Base Module class
│   │   ├── linear.ts      # Linear (fully connected) layer
│   │   ├── activation.ts  # ReLU, Softmax, etc.
│   │   └── sequential.ts  # Sequential container
│   └── index.ts           # Public API exports
├── examples/              # Interactive demos
├── tests/                 # Comprehensive test suite
└── dist/                  # Built output (ESM, CJS, types)

API Reference

GraphData

The fundamental data structure for representing graphs:

const graph = new GraphData({
  x: Float32Array,           // Node features [numNodes * numFeatures]
  numNodes: number,          // Number of nodes
  numFeatures: number,       // Features per node
  edgeIndex: Uint32Array,    // Edge list [2 * numEdges] in COO format
  numEdges: number,          // Number of edges
  edgeAttr?: Float32Array,   // Optional edge attributes
  y?: Float32Array,          // Optional node labels
});

// Methods
graph.addSelfLoops()         // Add self-connections to all nodes
graph.hasSelfLoops()         // Check if self-loops exist
graph.isDirected()           // Check if graph is directed
graph.getInDegrees()         // Get in-degree for each node
graph.getOutDegrees()        // Get out-degree for each node
graph.getNeighbors(nodeId)   // Get neighbors of a node

GNN Layers

// Graph Convolutional Network
const gcn = new GCNConv({
  inChannels: 16,      // Input feature dimension
  outChannels: 32,     // Output feature dimension
  bias: true,          // Use bias (default: true)
  normalize: true,     // Apply symmetric normalization (default: true)
  addSelfLoops: true,  // Add self-loops (default: true)
});

// Graph Attention Network
const gat = new GATConv({
  inChannels: 16,
  outChannels: 32,
  heads: 4,            // Number of attention heads (default: 1)
  concat: true,        // Concatenate heads (default: true)
  dropout: 0.6,        // Attention dropout (default: 0)
  negativeSlope: 0.2,  // LeakyReLU slope (default: 0.2)
});

// GraphSAGE
const sage = new SAGEConv({
  inChannels: 16,
  outChannels: 32,
  aggregator: 'mean',  // 'mean' | 'max' | 'sum' | 'pool'
  normalize: true,     // L2 normalize output (default: false)
  rootWeight: true,    // Include self features (default: true)
});

Building Models

import { Sequential, ReLU, Dropout, Softmax } from 'browser-gnn';

const model = new Sequential([
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 32, outChannels: 64 }),
  new ReLU(),
  new Dropout(0.5),
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 64, outChannels: 32 }),
  new ReLU(),
  new GCNConv({ inChannels: 32, outChannels: numClasses }),
  new Softmax(),
]);

// Training mode (dropout active)
model.train();

// Evaluation mode (dropout disabled)
model.eval();

// Forward pass
const output = model.forward(graph);

Utility Functions

import { randomGraph, fromEdgeList, createBrowserGNN } from 'browser-gnn';

// Create random graph for testing
const graph = randomGraph(100, 0.1, 32);  // 100 nodes, 10% edge prob, 32 features

// Create graph from edge list
const edges = [[0, 1], [1, 2], [2, 0]];
const graph = fromEdgeList(edges, 3);  // 3 nodes

// Initialize BrowserGNN (detects best backend)
const { backend, info } = await createBrowserGNN();

Use Cases

1. Privacy-Preserving Applications

Analyze sensitive graph data without it ever leaving the user's device:

Social Network Analysis: Friend recommendation, community detection, influence analysis
Medical Knowledge Graphs: Patient relationship modeling, clinical decision support
Financial Fraud Detection: Transaction graph analysis on sensitive banking data

2. Edge Computing & IoT

Research shows GNNs on edge devices achieve 21x lower latency than centralized methods:

Smart Home Networks: Device relationship modeling
Industrial IoT: Sensor network anomaly detection
Mobile Apps: Offline-first graph reasoning

3. Client-Side Molecule & Drug Discovery

Drug discovery and chemistry education in the browser:

Molecular property prediction
Drug-drug interaction checking in healthcare apps
Chemical structure classification

4. Knowledge Graph Reasoning

Enable semantic search and reasoning without backend:

Entity classification
Link prediction
Question answering over graphs

5. Real-Time Recommendation

Edge-based recommendations computed locally:

Product recommendations (user-item graphs)
Content suggestions
Collaborative filtering without server roundtrips

6. Education & Research

Interactive GNN learning without infrastructure:

Visualize message passing
Rapid prototyping without Python setup
Democratizing GNN access for students

Integration with Small Language Models (SLMs)

BrowserGNN becomes even more powerful when combined with browser-based Small Language Models. Recent research shows that SLM + GNN integration achieves near-LLM performance while running on resource-constrained devices.

Architecture: GNN as Knowledge Encoder for SLMs

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Browser Environment                   │
│                                                         │
│  ┌─────────────┐    embeddings    ┌─────────────────┐  │
│  │ BrowserGNN  │ ───────────────► │  SLM (WebLLM/   │  │
│  │ (GCN/GAT)   │                  │  Phi-3/Gemma)   │  │
│  └─────────────┘                  └─────────────────┘  │
│        ▲                                   │           │
│        │                                   ▼           │
│  ┌─────────────┐                  ┌─────────────────┐  │
│  │ Knowledge   │                  │ Natural Language│  │
│  │ Graph       │                  │ Response        │  │
│  └─────────────┘                  └─────────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Synergy Patterns

| Pattern | How It Works | Example | |---------|--------------|---------| | Knowledge-Enhanced Q&A | BrowserGNN encodes knowledge graph, SLM uses embeddings for grounded answers | "How are these drugs related?" with reasoning path | | Graph-Guided Retrieval | GNN identifies relevant subgraphs, SLM generates response from context | Reduced hallucination through structural grounding | | Entity Relationship Understanding | GNN captures multi-hop relationships, SLM translates to natural language | "Explain the connection between Gene X and Disease Y" | | On-Device AI Assistant | Personal knowledge graph + BrowserGNN + SLM = private conversational AI | 100% offline, nothing leaves device |

Why This Combination Matters

Privacy: Both GNN and SLM run entirely in browser—sensitive data never leaves the device
Performance: Research shows GNN+LLM achieves state-of-the-art on knowledge-intensive QA
Efficiency: SLMs (Phi-3, Gemma 2B) + BrowserGNN run on consumer hardware
Interpretability: GNN provides explicit reasoning paths that SLM can explain

Example: Knowledge Graph Q&A

import { GraphData, GATConv } from 'browser-gnn';
// Assume WebLLM or similar is loaded

// 1. Encode knowledge graph with BrowserGNN
const knowledgeGraph = new GraphData({ /* entities and relations */ });
const gat = new GATConv({ inChannels: 128, outChannels: 64, heads: 4 });
const nodeEmbeddings = gat.forward(knowledgeGraph);

// 2. Find relevant subgraph for query
const relevantNodes = findRelevantNodes(query, nodeEmbeddings);
const subgraphContext = extractSubgraph(knowledgeGraph, relevantNodes);

// 3. Feed to SLM with graph context
const prompt = `Given this knowledge: ${subgraphContext}\n\nQuestion: ${query}`;
const response = await slm.generate(prompt);

Compatible Browser SLMs

| Model | Size | Works with BrowserGNN | |-------|------|----------------------| | Phi-3-mini | 3.8B | ✅ Via WebLLM | | Gemma 2B | 2B | ✅ Via WebLLM | | TinyLlama | 1.1B | ✅ Via WebLLM | | ONNX Models | Various | ✅ Via ONNX Runtime Web |

Browser Support

| Browser | Supported | Notes | |---------|-----------|-------| | Chrome 90+ | ✅ | Full support | | Edge 90+ | ✅ | Full support | | Firefox 90+ | ✅ | Full support | | Safari 15+ | ✅ | Full support |

Roadmap

Phase 1: Core Library ✅

[x] Tensor operations
[x] GraphData structure
[x] Sparse matrix operations (COO, CSR)
[x] GCN, GAT, GraphSAGE layers
[x] Sequential model container
[x] Comprehensive test suite (129+ tests)

Phase 2: Performance Optimization ✅

[x] WebGPU compute shaders for GPU acceleration
[x] WASM-optimized kernels with 8x loop unrolling
[x] WASM scatter/gather operations
[x] forwardAsync() API for GPU inference

Phase 3: Training Support ✅

[x] Automatic differentiation (autograd)
[x] Optimizers (SGD, Adam, Adagrad, RMSprop)
[x] Loss functions (CrossEntropy, MSE, BCE, NLL, L1, SmoothL1)
[x] LR Schedulers (Step, Exponential, Cosine, ReduceOnPlateau)
[x] Trainer class with early stopping

Phase 4: Advanced Features (Current)

[x] GINConv layer
[x] Model Zoo (education-focused models)
[x] Model serialization/deserialization
[ ] More layer types (EdgeConv, ChebConv)
[ ] Heterogeneous graphs
[ ] ONNX model import

Performance

Inference benchmarks on a MacBook Pro M1:

| Graph Size | Nodes | Edges | GCN (3 layer) | GAT (2 head) | |------------|-------|-------|---------------|--------------| | Small | 10 | 20 | 0.5ms | 0.8ms | | Medium | 100 | 500 | 2.1ms | 4.3ms | | Large | 500 | 2500 | 12.4ms | 28.7ms | | XLarge | 1000 | 10000 | 45.2ms | 112.3ms |

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see our Contributing Guide for details.

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/fenago/BrowserGNN.git
cd BrowserGNN

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run tests
npm test

# Run dev server
npm run example

Citation

If you use BrowserGNN in your research, please cite:

@software{browsergnn2024,
  author = {Dr. Lee},
  title = {BrowserGNN: The World's First Graph Neural Network Library for the Browser},
  year = {2024},
  url = {https://github.com/fenago/BrowserGNN}
}

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

BrowserGNN by Dr. Lee

Democratizing Graph Neural Networks - One Browser at a Time

Live Demo | npm Package | GitHub

Report Bug | Request Feature