Hister: Your Own Search Engine

Hister, a private search engine that indexes the full contents of visited pages and local files, has been released as an open-source tool by developer asciimoo. The software runs locally with no telemetry or mandatory cloud service, supports browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome, and offers optional semantic search through a user-configured embeddings endpoint. Hister is available for download on GitHub under the AGPLv3 license.

Your own search engine Hister is a private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep. It indexes their full contents so you can find information again from the web interface, terminal, or an AI assistant connected through MCP. Try the demo https://demo.hister.org/ · Download Hister https://github.com/asciimoo/hister/releases/latest · Read the quickstart https://hister.org/docs/quickstart · Documentation https://hister.org/docs - Download the binary for your platform from the latest release https://github.com/asciimoo/hister/releases/latest , then rename it to hister hister.exe on Windows . - On Linux or macOS, make it executable: chmod +x hister - Start Hister on Linux or macOS: ./hister On Windows, run .\hister.exe in PowerShell. - Open http://127.0.0.1:4433 http://127.0.0.1:4433 and install the browser extension for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hister/ or Chrome https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hister/cciilamhchpmbdnniabclekddabkifhb . No configuration is required for a local personal setup. See the complete quickstart https://hister.org/docs/quickstart to import existing browser history and choose what Hister indexes. Privacy focused : No telemetry or mandatory cloud service. Run Hister locally or on infrastructure you control. Full text indexing : Search the actual contents of visited pages and local files, not only titles and URLs. Automatic browser indexing : Save newly visited pages with the Firefox or Chrome extension. Powerful queries : Use field filters, phrases, wildcards, negation, aliases, and result priorities. Optional semantic search : Find documents by meaning through an embeddings endpoint you configure. Crawler and browser import : Index websites or bring in existing browser history. Web, terminal, and MCP clients : Search from the browser, TUI, command line, or an AI assistant. Multi user support : Host separate indexes for a household, community, or team. By default, Hister has no telemetry and no cloud sync. The browser extension sends indexed page content only to the Hister server you configure, apart from downloading page favicons. The server stores documents and search indexes on that server. Optional semantic search sends document text to the embeddings endpoint you choose. Review the privacy overview https://hister.org/docs/intro privacy and semantic search configuration https://hister.org/docs/configuration semantic-search before enabling remote integrations. Requirements are Go 1.26, npm, and a C compiler for CGO dependencies. git clone https://github.com/asciimoo/hister.git cd hister ./manage.sh build To work on the web app with hot reload and automatic Go rebuilds: npm run serve:app This starts a Vite development server and the Go backend with automatic rebuilds through air https://github.com/air-verse/air . Join us on IRCNet in hister or on Discord https://discord.gg/beEyuHxRSs . Read CONTRIBUTING.md /asciimoo/hister/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md before submitting a change. Bugs and suggestions belong in the issue tracker https://github.com/asciimoo/hister/issues . For security reports, see SECURITY.md /asciimoo/hister/blob/master/SECURITY.md . AGPLv3 /asciimoo/hister/blob/master/LICENSE or any later version