hister
Hister is a self-hosted, privacy-focused personal search engine that indexes web pages you visit and files you keep. It offers full-text search, powerful query options, and multiple interfaces without relying on third-party cloud services. This project appeals to HN's DIY ethic and desire for privacy-respecting alternatives to mainstream services.
The Lowdown
Hister emerges as an answer to the growing demand for personal data control, offering users a robust, self-hosted search engine solution. It aims to empower individuals by allowing them to index and search their own digital footprint – visited webpages and local files – all while ensuring privacy and eschewing reliance on external services.
- Personal Indexing: Hister creates a private search index from web pages you visit (via browser extensions) and local files you store.
- Comprehensive Search: It performs full-text indexing, meaning you can search the actual content of documents and web pages, not just their titles or URLs.
- Privacy-Centric: Designed with privacy as a core principle, Hister operates entirely locally by default, with no telemetry, mandatory cloud services, or data transmission to third parties.
- Flexible Access: Users can interact with their personal search engine through a web interface, a terminal UI, command-line tools, or even integrate it with AI assistants via MCP.
- Advanced Features: It supports powerful query syntax, including field filters, phrases, wildcards, and negation, and offers optional semantic search capabilities for finding content by meaning.
- Easy Setup & Import: Hister can be quickly set up with pre-built binaries, Homebrew, Docker, or Nix, and allows for importing existing browser history or indexing local directories.
By providing a comprehensive, privacy-respecting, and highly customizable personal search engine, Hister taps into a significant niche for users looking to reclaim control over their digital information discovery process.