README

Hister

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 · Download Hister · Read the quickstart · Documentation · Support the development

!Hister web interface

 Quickstart

1. Download the binary for your platform from the latest release, then rename it to hister (hister.exe on Windows).

2. On Linux or macOS, make it executable:

   bash
   chmod +x hister
   

3. Start Hister on Linux or macOS:

   bash
   ./hister listen
   

   On Windows, run .\hister.exe listen in PowerShell.

   Keep this terminal open while using Hister. The server must be running to index pages and search them.

4. Open  and install the browser extension for Firefox or Chrome.

5. Visit a web page with the extension enabled, then return to Hister and search for a phrase from that page to find your first indexed result.

No configuration is required for a local personal setup. See the complete quickstart to choose what Hister indexes.

To search existing content, import browser history, import browser bookmarks, index local directories, or import files.

Alternative installation methods include Homebrew (brew install hister), Docker, and Nix. See the installation guide for instructions.

 Features

- 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 and bookmarks.
- Web, terminal, and MCP clients: Search from the browser, TUI, command line, or an AI assistant.
- Multi user support: Keep each user's documents and search results separate on a shared server.

!Hister terminal interface

 Privacy

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 and semantic search configuration before enabling remote integrations.

 Why Hister?

Unlike traditional search engines, Hister builds a personal search index from the web pages and files you choose to keep. Your content stays on your Hister server, making it useful for finding information you've already encountered without relying on a third-party search provider.

 Development

Requ