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Hister: A private search engine for the pages you visit and the files you keep

741 points · 202 comments · bookofjoe

  1. asciimoo · · focus · HN ↗
    Ohi, author here! Thanks for posting Hister. Feel free to A.M.A. My first free software search project was Searx, a privacy respecting metasearch engine, but because of the limitations of the metasearch concept, I've decided to take a different approach.

    Hister builds a personal search index from pages you visit, bookmarks, browser history, local files, and crawled websites. It stores extracted content with offline result previews, so information remains searchable even when the original page changes or disappears. It supports full text and semantic search, can run entirely on your own machine, and includes a web interface, command line tools, and an MCP endpoint for assistant integrations.

    Website: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hister.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hister.org&#x2F;

    Tiny read-only demo: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;demo.hister.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;demo.hister.org&#x2F;

    Ps.: It looks like our name conflicts with a registered trademark in the US. The owner of the other project has asked us to change it, so we’ll probably need to comply sooner or later.

    Name suggestions are welcome! Ideally, the new name should be relatively short, sound good, and have an available .org domain.

    Thanks!

    1. adfm · · focus · HN ↗
      histro.org is available.
      1. asciimoo · · focus · HN ↗
        Unfortunately, it is still considered too similar from a legal standpoint.
        1. adfm · · focus · HN ↗
          In that case, clipshot.org is also available.
        2. juliend2 · · focus · HN ↗
          historea.org is available.

          It sounds like history, storage and ethereal at the same time.

          1. _kidlike · · focus · HN ↗
            that exactly how the Greek word sounds :)

            ιστορία, if you wanna copy paste.

            and yes, the English word comes from the Greek word!

        3. golem14 · · focus · HN ↗
          I doubt it. Trademark “infringement “ only happens when the two parties compete in the same space. I think if the other party is the music party game, you’re pretty much in the clear. They may still sue you and lose unless you cave.
          1. TaLiTr · · focus · HN ↗
            Nothing stopping them from threatening an open-source dev. The &quot;&quot;recent&quot;&quot; incident of Hoarder rebranding to Karakeep comes to mind.
            1. golem14 · · focus · HN ↗
              Exactly. We should have a general kickstarter-like fund for cases like this. Maybe John Oliver is interested :)
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