mcpbeat

Sentence Transformers

orchestra-research/sentence-transformers

Framework for state-of-the-art sentence, text, and image embeddings. Provides 5000+ pre-trained models for semantic similarity, clustering, and retrieval. Supports multilingual, domain-specific, and multimodal models. Use for generating embeddings for RAG, semantic search, or similarity tasks. Best for production embedding generation.

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
2
files
instructions only
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
11362
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/Orchestra-Research/AI-Research-SKILLs --skill sentence-transformers

The instruction itself

19 sections, as written by the author

Sentence Transformers - State-of-the-Art Embeddings

Python framework for sentence and text embeddings using transformers.

When to use Sentence Transformers

Use when:

  • Need high-quality embeddings for RAG
  • Semantic similarity and search
  • Text clustering and classification
  • Multilingual embeddings (100+ languages)
  • Running embeddings locally (no API)
  • Cost-effective alternative to OpenAI embeddings

Metrics:

  • 15,700+ GitHub stars
  • 5000+ pre-trained models
  • 100+ languages supported
  • Based on PyTorch/Transformers

Use alternatives instead:

  • OpenAI Embeddings: Need API-based, highest quality
  • Instructor: Task-specific instructions
  • Cohere Embed: Managed service

Quick start

Installation

pip install sentence-transformers

Basic usage

from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer

# Load model
model = SentenceTransformer('all-MiniLM-L6-v2')

# Generate embeddings
sentences = [
    "This is an example sentence",
    "Each sentence is converted to a vector"
]

embeddings = model.encode(sentences)
print(embeddings.shape)  # (2, 384)

# Cosine similarity
from sentence_transformers.util import cos_sim
similarity = cos_sim(embeddings[0], embeddings[1])
print(f"Similarity: {similarity.item():.4f}")

General purpose

# Fast, good quality (384 dim)
model = SentenceTransformer('all-MiniLM-L6-v2')

# Better quality (768 dim)
model = SentenceTransformer('all-mpnet-base-v2')

# Best quality (1024 dim, slower)
model = SentenceTransformer('all-roberta-large-v1')

Multilingual

# 50+ languages
model = SentenceTransformer('paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2')

# 100+ languages
model = SentenceTransformer('paraphrase-multilingual-mpnet-base-v2')

Domain-specific

# Legal domain
model = SentenceTransformer('nlpaueb/legal-bert-base-uncased')

# Scientific papers
model = SentenceTransformer('allenai/specter')

# Code
model = SentenceTransformer('microsoft/codebert-base')
from sentence_transformers import SentenceTransformer, util

model = SentenceTransformer('all-MiniLM-L6-v2')

# Corpus
corpus = [
    "Python is a programming language",
    "Machine learning uses algorithms",
    "Neural networks are powerful"
]

# Encode corpus
corpus_embeddings = model.encode(corpus, convert_to_tensor=True)

# Query
query = "What is Python?"
query_embedding = model.encode(query, convert_to_tensor=True)

# Find most similar
hits = util.semantic_search(query_embedding, corpus_embeddings, top_k=3)
print(hits)

Similarity computation

# Cosine similarity
similarity = util.cos_sim(embedding1, embedding2)

# Dot product
similarity = util.dot_score(embedding1, embedding2)

# Pairwise cosine similarity
similarities = util.cos_sim(embeddings, embeddings)

Batch encoding

# Efficient batch processing
sentences = ["sentence 1", "sentence 2", ...] * 1000

embeddings = model.encode(
    sentences,
    batch_size=32,
    show_progress_bar=True,
    convert_to_tensor=False  # or True for PyTorch tensors
)

Fine-tuning

from sentence_transformers import InputExample, losses
from torch.utils.data import DataLoader

# Training data
train_examples = [
    InputExample(texts=['sentence 1', 'sentence 2'], label=0.8),
    InputExample(texts=['sentence 3', 'sentence 4'], label=0.3),
]

train_dataloader = DataLoader(train_examples, batch_size=16)

# Loss function
train_loss = losses.CosineSimilarityLoss(model)

# Train
model.fit(
    train_objectives=[(train_dataloader, train_loss)],
    epochs=10,
    warmup_steps=100
)

# Save
model.save('my-finetuned-model')

LangChain integration

from langchain_community.embeddings import HuggingFaceEmbeddings

embeddings = HuggingFaceEmbeddings(
    model_name="sentence-transformers/all-mpnet-base-v2"
)

# Use with vector stores
from langchain_chroma import Chroma

vectorstore = Chroma.from_documents(
    documents=docs,
    embedding=embeddings
)

LlamaIndex integration

from llama_index.embeddings.huggingface import HuggingFaceEmbedding

embed_model = HuggingFaceEmbedding(
    model_name="sentence-transformers/all-mpnet-base-v2"
)

from llama_index.core import Settings
Settings.embed_model = embed_model

# Use in index
index = VectorStoreIndex.from_documents(documents)

Model selection guide

| Model | Dimensions | Speed | Quality | Use Case |

|-------|------------|-------|---------|----------|

| all-MiniLM-L6-v2 | 384 | Fast | Good | General, prototyping |

| all-mpnet-base-v2 | 768 | Medium | Better | Production RAG |

| all-roberta-large-v1 | 1024 | Slow | Best | High accuracy needed |

| paraphrase-multilingual | 768 | Medium | Good | Multilingual |

Best practices

  • Start with all-MiniLM-L6-v2 - Good baseline
  • Normalize embeddings - Better for cosine similarity
  • Use GPU if available - 10× faster encoding
  • Batch encoding - More efficient
  • Cache embeddings - Expensive to recompute
  • Fine-tune for domain - Improves quality
  • Test different models - Quality varies by task
  • Monitor memory - Large models need more RAM

Performance

| Model | Speed (sentences/sec) | Memory | Dimension |

|-------|----------------------|---------|-----------|

| MiniLM | ~2000 | 120MB | 384 |

| MPNet | ~600 | 420MB | 768 |

| RoBERTa | ~300 | 1.3GB | 1024 |

Resources

  • GitHub: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers ⭐ 15,700+
  • Models: https://huggingface.co/sentence-transformers
  • Docs: https://www.sbert.net
  • License: Apache 2.0

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take orchestra-research/sentence-transformers from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.

Install what it needs

The instructions reference pip. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.