Open source projects by Matthew Summers
A collection of tools and packages born from real-world challenges, shared with the developer community.
Tools built to solve real problems, open sourced for everyone.
Bringing Retrieval to Indexed Models - Semantic search for Laravel using Ollama and pgvector. Local-first, privacy-focused, no API keys required.
Transform your Laravel application with AI-powered semantic search. Find content by meaning, not just keywords. Works with any Eloquent model through a simple trait. Supports both local Ollama models and OpenAI embeddings.
Stay tuned for additional open source tools and packages.
Software Engineer | Open Source Contributor
I've been writing code for over 26 years, and I still get excited about solving hard problems. My journey started with BASIC in 5th grade, then I discovered Unix through a friend whose mother worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey, so they always had Unix machines at their house. Later I got into playing MUDs like Leviathan. I started coding PHP professionally in 1998, then took a detour into C development writing telecom protocol drivers before returning to my focus on PHP and open source. I've worked across the major PHP frameworks over the years: Zend, CodeIgniter, Kohana, Symfony, CakePHP, and now Laravel where I spend most of my time. I'm particularly interested in AI/ML integration, vector databases, and making semantic search accessible to everyday developers.
The Brim package came from a real need I encountered: wanting semantic search without the complexity of external APIs or the privacy concerns of sending data to third parties. I built it to use Ollama locally with pgvector, and it's been a fun project to develop and share with the community.
These days I spend most of my development time in Laravel with Livewire, or in Python building AI/ML systems for data analysis and semantic search. I believe the future of AI is local-first, and I'm building tools to make that easier.
When I'm not coding, I enjoy spending time with my family, including our Morkie Brimley, the namesake of this project.