# What is R2R?

**On this page**
1. [What does R2R do?](#what-does-r2r-do)
2. [What can R2R do for my applications?](#what-can-r2r-do-for-my-applications)
3. [What can R2R do for my developers?](#what-can-r2r-do-for-my-developers)
4. [What can R2R do for my business?](#what-can-r2r-do-for-my-business)
5. [Getting started](#getting-started)

Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have shown the incredible potential of AI for understanding and generating human language. But building reliable AI applications that can work with your organization's specific knowledge and documents requires significant expertise and infrastructure. Your company isn't an AI infrastructure company: **it doesn't make sense for you to build a complete AI retrieval (RAG) system from scratch.**

R2R provides the infrastructure and tools to help you implement **efficient, scalable, and reliable AI-powered document understanding** in your applications.

## What does R2R do?

R2R consists of three main components: **document processing**, **AI-powered search and generation**, and **analytics**. The document processing and search capabilities make it easier for your developers to create intelligent applications that can understand and work with your organization's knowledge. The analytics tools enable your teams to monitor performance, understand usage patterns, and continuously improve the system.

## What can R2R do for my applications?

R2R provides your applications with production-ready RAG capabilities:
- Fast and accurate document search using both semantic and keyword matching
- Intelligent document processing that works with PDFs, images, audio, and more
- Automatic relationship extraction to build knowledge graphs
- Built-in user management and access controls
- Simple integration through REST APIs and SDKs

## What can R2R do for my developers?

R2R provides a complete toolkit that simplifies building AI-powered applications:
- **Ready-to-use Docker deployment** for quick setup and testing
- **Python and JavaScript SDKs** for easy integration
- **RESTful API** for language-agnostic access
- **Flexible configuration** through intuitive config files
- **Comprehensive documentation** and examples
- **Local deployment option** for working with sensitive data

## What can R2R do for my business?

R2R provides the infrastructure to build AI applications that can:
- **Make your documents searchable** with state of the art AI
- **Answer questions** using your organization's knowledge
- **Process and understand** documents at scale
- **Secure sensitive information** through built-in access controls
- **Monitor usage and performance** through analytics
- **Scale efficiently** as your needs grow

## Getting Started

The fastest way to start with R2R is through Docker:
```bash
pip install r2r
r2r serve --docker
```

This gives you a complete RAG system running at http://localhost:7272 with:
- Document ingestion and processing
- Vector search capabilities
- GraphRAG features
- User management
- Analytics dashboard

Visit our [Quickstart Guide](../../documentation/getting-started/quickstart.md) to begin building with R2R.

## Learn More

- [System Architecture](../system.md) - Understand how R2R components work together
- [More about RAG](rag.md) - Deep dive into Retrieval-Augmented Generation
- [Installation Guide](../../self-hosting/getting-started/installation/overview.md) - Set up R2R for your environment
- [API Documentation](../../api/README.md) - Complete API reference
