> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pmbai.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Adding a language

> Short version: you probably don't have to do anything. A language works because the embedder already knows it.

As of v0.9 PMB has **no per-language packs** in its core. A language works
because the multilingual embedder already knows it - not because someone
hand-wrote a list.

## Why most languages just work

<Steps>
  <Step title="Recall - language-agnostic">
    The embedder (`paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2`, 50+ languages) maps
    same-meaning text to nearby vectors across languages. A Russian query finds
    an English fact, no translation.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Intents & extraction - English anchors (warm)">
    Classified by English semantic anchors; the embedder projects your language
    next to them, so "was sind meine Ziele" lands on the same `goals_query`
    anchor as "what are my open goals".
  </Step>

  <Step title="Cold lexical path - self-compiling (ALD)">
    As the warm tier classifies your messages, it logs which n-grams co-fired
    with which anchor and distils the high-precision ones into
    `$PMB_HOME/lang/auto.yaml`. Your common phrasings then classify *cold*, at
    regex speed - generated from your own traffic, not a pack.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Check that your language works

```bash theme={null}
pmb warmup                              # load the embedder once
pmb recall "<a query in your language>" # should surface the right facts
cat "$PMB_HOME/lang/auto.yaml"          # grows from your traffic over days
```

<Warning>
  Honest limits: ALD only learns while the **warm daemon** runs and needs some
  traffic; CJK (no spaces) stays warm-anchor-only; exact top-1 is weaker for
  zh/ja (still strong in top-3).
</Warning>

## If your language is weak: swap the embedder

The real lever now - not writing a pack:

```bash theme={null}
pmb config set embedding.model BAAI/bge-m3   # broader language coverage
pmb reindex
pmb daemon restart
```

Anchor calibration is keyed by model id, so it rebuilds itself automatically.

## Escape hatch: hand-seed a pack

The file-based pack mechanism still exists to bootstrap a language's cold path
before ALD has traffic. Opt-in and additive - with no pack files PMB behaves
exactly as shipped.

```bash theme={null}
pmb lang list          # shipped templates (de, es, fr) + what's enabled
pmb lang enable de     # copy the template to $PMB_HOME/lang/de.yaml
pmb daemon restart
pmb reindex
```