# Headroom

> Compress tool outputs, logs, files, and RAG chunks before they reach the LLM. 20% fewer tokens for coding agents, 60-95% fewer tokens for JSON, same answers. L… Added from the nightly trending feed on 2026-10-20 with 76,363 GitHub stars. So far only the licence comes from GitHub; the other facts are unknown until someone checks them.

- Repository: https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom
- Official docs: https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#readme
- Checked: 2026-10-21

## What it replaces
Nothing people pay for: a free tool, listed because people search for it.

## Facts, with sources

| Question | Status | Answer | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on my machine? | Confirmed | Yes, Python CLI, library and local proxy; compression runs on your machine | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#readme | 2026-10-21 |
| Code licence | Confirmed | Apache-2.0 | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#license | 2026-10-20 |
| Model weights licence | Confirmed | Kompress-v2-base compressor weights are Apache-2.0; the default embedding model (BAAI bge-small-en-v1.5) keeps its own licence | https://huggingface.co/chopratejas/kompress-v2-base | 2026-10-21 |
| Commercial use | Confirmed | Yes, Apache-2.0 code and Apache-2.0 Kompress model | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom/blob/main/LICENSE | 2026-10-21 |
| Paid services needed? | Partial | None for Headroom itself; it sits in front of the LLM provider or coding agent you use, which may be paid | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#how-it-works | 2026-10-21 |
| Hardware | Unknown | Not checked yet | none found | - |
| Operating systems | Confirmed | Wheels for Windows, Linux and macOS; Intel Macs may need Docker or a source build | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#install | 2026-10-21 |
| Setup effort | Confirmed | Easy; uv tool install or pip install | https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom#install | 2026-10-21 |

GitHub: 76780 stars, 5960 forks, last push 2026-10-21, archived: no.
---
Source: RepoQuarry (https://repoquarry.dev/projects/headroom). Data licence: CC BY 4.0. Quotes are from project documentation and belong to their authors.