sqlite-vec is a great vector index — Wax actually uses SQLite under the hood too.

The difference is the layer. sqlite-vec gives you vec_distance_cosine() in SQL. Wax gives you: hand it a .mov file, get back token-budgeted, LLM-ready context from keyframes and transcripts, with EXIF-accurate timestamps and hybrid BM25+vector search via RRF fusion — all on-device.

It's the difference between a B-tree and an ORM. You'd still need to write the entire ingestion pipeline, media parsing, frame hierarchy, token counting, and context assembly on top of sqlite-vec. That's what Wax is.