Hister is a private search engine that indexes the full contents of web pages you visit and files you keep. You can search from a web interface, terminal, or AI assistant connected through MCP. Download the binary from the latest release, rename it to hister (hister.exe on Windows), and make it executable on Linux or macOS.

Start the server, open http://127.0.0.1:4433, and install the browser extension for Firefox or Chrome. Visit a web page with the extension enabled, then search for phrases to find indexed results. No configuration is required for local setups.

Hister offers privacy-focused indexing with no telemetry or mandatory cloud service, full text search, automatic browser indexing, powerful queries, and optional semantic search. It supports multi-user environments and alternative installation via Homebrew, Docker, or Nix. The project requires Go 1.26, npm, and a C compiler for development.