What is Hister used for?

Hister is a private, self-run search engine that indexes visited web pages and your files, searchable from a browser, a terminal or an AI assistant via MCP. It is a good fit for re-finding pages you read earlier and giving AI assistants access to personal browsing history.

Is Hister open source?

Yes. Hister is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at asciimoo/hister and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Hister is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Hister?

Yes. Hister can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Hister?

Similar open-source tools in the Search category include SearXNG, YaCy and Degoog. SaaS products in the same category include Brave Search, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.

Is Hister actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Hister was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.20.0, published on 24 September 2026. The project has 5.8k stars on GitHub.

Hister: open-source search

About Hister

Hister is a personal search engine covering web pages you have browsed and files you keep. Everything is indexed in full, so you can locate something again later instead of relying on browser history titles. Results are available from a web interface, from the terminal, or from an AI assistant connected through MCP.

Getting started means downloading a single binary for your platform, starting it with the listen command, and installing the companion browser extension for Firefox or Chrome. The server must be running for pages to be indexed and searched. Repository topics highlight privacy, semantic search, browser history and personal search. It is written in Go and a demo is available.

Hister is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and runs on your own computer or server, keeping what you read out of third-party hands. It suits privacy-conscious users, researchers and developers who want a searchable archive of everything they have read.

Key features

Full-content indexing of visited pages
Search from web UI, terminal or MCP
Firefox and Chrome browser extension
Local file indexing
Single downloadable binary
Semantic search support

Good fit for

→Re-finding pages you read earlier
→Giving AI assistants access to personal browsing history

Built with: Go
Tags: search-engine; personal-search; browser-history; privacy; mcp; self-hosted; golang

Hister: questions and answers

What is Hister used for?: Hister is a private, self-run search engine that indexes visited web pages and your files, searchable from a browser, a terminal or an AI assistant via MCP. It is a good fit for re-finding pages you read earlier and giving AI assistants access to personal browsing history.
Is Hister open source?: Yes. Hister is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at asciimoo/hister and is written mainly in Go.
Is Hister free?: Yes. Hister is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Hister?: Yes. Hister can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Hister?: Similar open-source tools in the Search category include SearXNG, YaCy and Degoog. SaaS products in the same category include Brave Search, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
Is Hister actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Hister was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v0.20.0, published on 24 September 2026. The project has 5.8k stars on GitHub.