Hister is a private search engine that indexes full page contents and browser history and can be queried via browser, terminal, or MCP client. It emphasizes local privacy with no telemetry by default and supports optional semantic search and multi-user setups.
Collecting history — the radar snapshots this repo daily. The trend line appears after 3 days of data (1 so far).
What it is
Hister is a private search engine for pages you visit and 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.
How it works
Hister indexes full text from visited pages and local files. It supports optional semantic search via an embeddings endpoint you configure, and can import browser history or websites via a crawler. It provides clients for web, terminal, MCP, and supports multi-user separation on a shared server.
Getting started
What to run from the README:
chmod +x hister
./hister listen
Open http://127.0.0.1:4433 and install the browser extension for Firefox or Chrome.
No configuration is required for a local personal setup. See the complete quickstart to import existing browser history and choose what Hister indexes.
Development setup uses:
git clone https://github.com/asciimoo/hister.git
cd hister
./manage.sh build
To work on the web app with hot reload:
npm run serve:app
Getting started (continued)
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
Recent releases
- rolling Hister (Dev Build) (2026-02-23): Automated build from master. Commit: e6b2677fc38b7c2b8a35a66d932180180e9253b3 Built on: 2026-08-04 15:33:40 UTC
- v0.17.0 (2026-07-28): New Features
- Unified Imports: The import interface is now grouped under
hister importand can import bookmarks and archived content from Lin
- Unified Imports: The import interface is now grouped under
- v0.16.0 (2026-07-01): Public Search Mode: Hister can run in public mode with unauthenticated read-only access to global search results and previews while write operations are protected
- v0.15.0 (2026-06-03): Document Versioning: A
versioningrule type tracks changes to a document each time it is re-indexed; a diff-style changelog appears inside the preview panel - v0.14.0 (2026-05-11): Mastodon Extractor: Detects Mastodon pages and indexes each toot as its own document
Traction
1810 stars, 90 forks, 32 open_issues as listed in the repository facts.
Behind the repo
Not provided in the README/Facts block.
Caveats
License: AGPL-3.0. Created 2026-01-04. Last push 2026-08-04. Open issues: 32. Language: Go.