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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. elektor · · focus · HN ↗
      Hi asciimoo, seems like this is the second time Hister is hitting the HN front page in a month, so congrats on the success!

      Question for you: For the less tech savvy of us on here, is there any chance Hister can be can hosted on something like Pikapods? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pikapods.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pikapods.com&#x2F;

      1. asciimoo · · focus · HN ↗
        Yes, that&#x27;s something I&#x27;d like to support. The main missing piece for a user-friendly hosting option such as PikaPods is a configuration UI. At the moment, customizing Hister requires editing a configuration file, which isn&#x27;t practical for this kind of hosted service.
        1. elektor · · focus · HN ↗
          Appreciate the response! I&#x27;ll be eagerly following Hister&#x27;s progress. For now, I&#x27;ve settled on a mix of Instapaper and using SingleFile uploads to Dropbox.
          1. cyanlimetea · · focus · HN ↗

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