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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. mircea · · focus · HN ↗
      On HN does it capture both the HN post page and the target page?

      E.g.: for this submission I would want both <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49743097">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49743097 and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;asciimoo&#x2F;hister" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;asciimoo&#x2F;hister captured.

      1. asciimoo · · focus · HN ↗
        The extension captures the content of the opened tabs, it does not create new requests. If you open both, it captures both.
        1. iririririr · · focus · HN ↗
          You may be the first &quot;search engine&quot; capable of indexing instagram and other closed sites.
          1. asciimoo · · focus · HN ↗
            Exactly, this is the biggest advantage of the extension. It is fully invisible for the websites, so no captcha, anti-bot protection, no authentication issues, every common bottleneck of a classic crawler is solved by the browser&#x2F;user.
          2. asimovDev · · focus · HN ↗
            Oh, I haven&#x27;t considered the possibility of indexing things like Instagram or Discord with this. I am now much more interested than before
          3. brunousedtowrit · · focus · HN ↗

            [dead]

          4. hipjiveguy · · focus · HN ↗
            Wouldn&#x27;t Google be doing this already as they own Chrome of course, which knows what you&#x27;re looking at?
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