SearchHub

A local search engine for your browser bookmarks and history. Import bookmarks/history from Firefox, Zen, Chrome, or Chromium, search them with full-text queries, and optionally forward searches to external engines like wikipedia or SearXNG (aggregates results from dozens of backends). Content can be automatically tagged via local ONNX embeddings (opt-in; set tagging_enabled = true in config).

Install

Binaries are available at vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/latest. Download the binary for your architecture, extract, and run.

Source: Clone the repository and build with Rust:

Prerequisites: Rust (install via rustup).

git clone https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository.git search_hub
cd search_hub
cargo install --path .

This installs the search_hub binary to ~/.cargo/bin/search_hub.

To update later, pull the latest code and reinstall.

First steps

# Import bookmarks from Firefox (auto-discovers your profile)
search_hub import firefox

# Import from Chrome
search_hub import chrome

# Start the web UI
search_hub serve

Open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser. You can now search your bookmarks.

Search queries are also forwarded to external engines: Wikipedia, crates.io via its public JSON API, and optionally SearXNG (which aggregates Google, Bing, DDG, and dozens more) if [[engines]] is configured. Works as a custom search provider in Firefox/Zen via the OpenSearch protocol (your browser should auto-discover it at /opensearch.xml).

CLI reference

Command	What it does
`search_hub serve`	Start web UI on port 8080
`search_hub serve --port 3000`	Start on a custom port
`search_hub import firefox`	Import bookmarks from Firefox
`search_hub import chrome`	Import from Chrome/Chromium
`search_hub import zen`	Import from Zen Browser
`search_hub search "query"`	Search bookmarks from the terminal
`search_hub list`	List all bookmarks
`search_hub insert "Title" https://..."`	Add a bookmark (fetches content, auto-tags if enabled)
`search_hub remove --id 1`	Delete a bookmark by ID
`search_hub retag --all`	Re-run auto-tagging (requires `tagging_enabled = true` in config)
`search_hub init-config`	Create a default config file at `~/.config/search_hub/config.toml`
`search_hub self-update`	Check abbaye Atom feed and update to the latest release
`search_hub self-update --dry-run`	Check for updates without downloading
`search_hub self-update --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu`	Override the target triple

All commands use ~/.local/share/search_hub/bookmarks.db by default. Override with --db-path or set db_path in the config file.

The first time you use a search or insert command, SearchHub downloads an ONNX embedding model to $XDG_CACHE_DIR (defaults to ~/.cache/search_hub) (about 127 MB).

Configuration

Run search_hub init-config to create ~/.config/search_hub/config.toml with all available options commented out. Or create it manually:

# Bookmark database path (default: platform data directory)
# db_path = "/home/you/.local/share/search_hub/bookmarks.db"

# Custom tags override the built-in defaults
# [[tags]]
# name = "my-custom-tag"
# examples = ["example text one", "example text two"]

# Whether auto-tagging is enabled (default: false, requires ONNX model download on first use)
# tagging_enabled = true

# Minimum confidence for auto-tagging (0.0 to 1.0, default: 0.6)
# tagging_threshold = 0.6

# Hosts to skip when fetching content for bookmarking (default: local addresses)
# exclude_urls = ["localhost", "127.0.0.1", "::1"]

# Per-engine configuration (optional)
# Multiple instances supported (e.g., public + private crates.io registries)
[[engines]]
type = "searxng"
instance = "https://search.kael.ink"
# timeout_secs = 10.0  # optional per-engine timeout
# Best: use an existing public instance (see https://searx.space).
# Also possible: run your own with Docker:
#   docker run -d --name searxng -p 8888:8080 searxng/searxng

# Custom crates.io registry (optional)
# [[engines]]
# type = "crates_io"
# url = "https://registry.example.com/api/v1/crates?q={}&per_page=10"
# timeout_secs = 5.0

# Wikipedia search (optional, defaults to English)
# [[engines]]
# type = "wikipedia"
# lang = "fr"
# timeout_secs = 5.0

# MDN Web Docs search (optional, defaults to en-US)
# [[engines]]
# type = "mdn"
# locale = "fr"
# timeout_secs = 5.0

# Generic HTML-scraped engine (use with any search site)
# Provide a URL template with `{}` for the query and a CSS selector
# targeting the result container. Results are extracted from `<a>` links
# inside that container (deduplicated, up to 10, http/https only).
#
# Note: most commercial search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.)
# block automated requests. This engine works best with small/niche sites
# that don't enforce bot detection. To find the right selector, view the
# page source or use browser dev tools on the search results page.
# [[engines]]
# type = "generic"
# name = "DuckDuckGo"
# url = "https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q={}"
# selector = "div.results"
# timeout_secs = 10.0
# shortcode = "ddg"           # optional: override auto-generated shortcode
# bang_enabled = true          # optional: disable ! redirect but keep @
# bang_url = "..."             # optional: custom redirect URL (keeps shortcode)

Search shortcuts

SearchHub supports two query prefixes that use shortcodes — compact aliases auto-generated from your configured [[engines]].

Prefix	Example	Behavior
`!`	`!w Rust`	HTTP 302 redirect to the site's own search results page
`@`	`@w Rust`	Show search results from that engine only (bookmarks still shown)

Auto-generated shortcodes

Each engine type gets a sensible default shortcode:

Engine	Shortcode	Bang URL
Wikipedia (lang=en)	`w`	`https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={}`
Wikipedia (lang=fr)	`wfr`	`https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search={}`
MDN (locale=en-US)	`mdn`	`https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q={}`
MDN (locale=fr)	`mdnfr`	`https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/search?q={}`
crates.io	`crates`	`https://crates.io/search?q={}`
SearXNG	`sx`	`{instance}/search?q={}`
Generic	slugified name	the engine's own URL template

Overriding shortcodes per engine

Set shortcode, bang_url, or bang_enabled directly on the engine:

[[engines]]
type = "wikipedia"
lang = "fr"
shortcode = "wikifr"       # overrides "wfr"
bang_enabled = false       # disable ! redirect (still searchable via @)
bang_url = "https://..."   # custom redirect URL

Custom bangs (standalone shortcuts — no @ support)

[[bangs]]
trigger = "gh"
url = "https://github.com/search?q={}"
name = "GitHub"

# Suppress an auto-generated shortcut
[[bangs]]
trigger = "crates"
enabled = false

Collisions

If two engines produce the same shortcode, SearchHub panics at startup with a message naming both engines. Set shortcode on one of them to resolve it.

Run the web server as a systemd user service

Keeps the web UI running in the background, starts automatically on login.

VERSION=(search_hub --version | cut -d\  -f2)
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
wget -O ~/.config/systemd/user/search-hub-web.service https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/v$VERSION/contrib/search-hub-web.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now search-hub-web.service

Check status with systemctl --user status search-hub-web. View logs with journalctl --user -u search-hub-web -f.

Auto-import with systemd

VERSION=(search_hub --version | cut -d\  -f2)
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
wget -O ~/.config/systemd/user/search-hub-import.service https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/v$VERSION/contrib/search-hub-import.service
wget -O ~/.config/systemd/user/search-hub-import.timer https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/v$VERSION/contrib/search-hub-import.timer
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now search-hub-import.timer

This imports bookmarks from Zen Browser daily. Edit the file to import from another browser.

Auto-update with systemd

VERSION=(search_hub --version | cut -d\  -f2)
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
wget -O ~/.config/systemd/user/search-hub-update.service https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/v$VERSION/contrib/search-hub-update.service
wget -O ~/.config/systemd/user/search-hub-update.timer https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/v$VERSION/contrib/search-hub-update.timer
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now search-hub-self-update.timer

This checks for new releases weekly and updates the binary automatically.

Run with Podman / Docker

A container image is available at oci.vit.am/search-hub:latest. It serves on port 8080 as the search_hub user and expects:

Config mounted at /home/search_hub/.config/search_hub/config.toml
Database directory mounted at /home/search_hub/.local/share/search_hub/

# Pull and run
podman run -d --name search-hub \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v ~/.config/search_hub:/home/search_hub/.config/search_hub:ro \
  -v ~/.local/share/search_hub:/home/search_hub/.local/share/search_hub \
  oci.vit.am/search-hub:latest serve

# SIGHUP reload (re-reads config)
podman kill -s HUP search-hub

# Build locally from the Containerfile
podman build -t search-hub:latest -f Containerfile .

docker-compose

docker compose up -d

See docker-compose.yaml at the project root. A SearXNG service is included as a commented-out example.

Podman Quadlet (systemd-native)

mkdir -p ~/.config/containers/systemd
wget -O ~/.config/containers/systemd/search-hub.container https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository/browse/main/contrib/search-hub.container
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now search-hub

The Quadlet file uses %h (your home directory) for volume source paths.

Resources

Downloads: vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/latest
Repository browser: vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository
Git clone: git clone https://vit.am/~ololduck/search_hub/repository.git search_hub

Changes in 0.5.0

Added

Bang (!) and at-sign (@) shortcuts: !w query redirects to Wikipedia, @w query searches only Wikipedia. Shortcodes auto-generated from configured engines, overridable per-engine or via [[bangs]] config.
shortcode, bang_url, bang_enabled per-engine override fields.
Configurable standalone bangs via [[bangs]] in config.toml.
Dynamic shortcuts help in the web UI (press ?).
JSON API returns { type: "bang", redirect_url } for bang queries.