AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Sankofa – Chat with the Browser History
Hey Hackernews, I'm Ofer, head of developer relations at Vectara. Some of us read a lot of articles on the web, like those on HN, and it seems useful to be able to search the contents of the text we read (using semantic search), or ask questions about it (ChatGPT style). Sankofa is a new browser extension that allows you to index web pages you visit and search / ask questions about that content. We built it using Vectara's retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) platform and hope this is useful to folks. This is an initial release - we would love to hear any feedback and suggestions. BTW,…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Sankofa – Chat with the Browser History launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Hey there HN! I lead Product at Vectara. Some of us read a lot of articles on the web (like those on HN) and we were desperately trying to recall the text we read -- using semantic search because we might not have remembered the exact text we read. (Or ask questions about the content -- ChatGPT style.) Sankofa is a new browser extension that can automatically index web pages you visit and let you search / ask questions about that content. We built it using Vectara's retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG) platform and hope this is useful to folks. This is an initial release: we would love…
2024 · vectara.com · its alternatives →
- 2
- 3
I love HN but always felt the search with algolia is okay but does have some limitations. Since I work at Vectara I decided to try and create a better search for HN. It's based on data from roughly the last 6 months of HN stories and comments. Would love to hear feedback and how useful this is relative to the existing search.
2024 · hackernews.demo.vectara.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Web Extension: Easily find Hacker News discussions about the page you're currently browsing. - pinoceniccola/what-hn-says-webext
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5WS
We’ve trained a generative AI model to browse the web and answer questions/retrieve code snippets directly. Unlike ChatGPT, it has access to primary sources and is able to cite them when you hover over an answer (click on the text to go to the source being cited). We also show regular Bing results side-by-side with our AI answer. The model is an 11-billion parameter T5-derivative that has been fine-tuned on feedback given on hundreds of thousands of searches done (anonymously) on our platform. Giving the model web access lessens its burden to need to store a snapshot of human knowledge…
2022 · beta.sayhello.so · its alternatives →
- 6
I built this tool because I wanted a way to just take a bunch of URLs or domains, and query their content in RAG applications. It takes away the pain of crawling, extracting content, chunking, vectorizing, and updating periodically. I'm curious to see if it can be useful to others. I meant to launch this six months ago but life got in the way...
2024 · embedding.io · its alternatives →
- 7CR
Hey folks! I wanted to share one of the latest projects I worked on, called Vectara Portal. It's an application that allows users of our platform (https://vectara.com/) to create shareable pages that let you and other users (privately, if you wish) chat with, search through, or get answers from your documents. This began as a side project resulting from a question over lunch: "How do we put the power of our platform into the hands of users, without requiring them to code?" One hackathon weekend later, plus a few more days' worth of improvements, Portal was born. It's…
2024 · portal.demo.vectara.com · its alternatives →
- 8IB
We show the potential of modern, embedded graph databases in the browser by demonstrating a fully in-browser chatbot that can perform Graph RAG using Kuzu (the graph database we're building) and WebLLM, a popular in-browser inference engine for LLMs. The post retrieves from the graph via a Text-to-Cypher pipeline that translates a user question into a Cypher query, and the LLM uses the retrieved results to synthesize a response. As LLMs get better, and WebGPU and Wasm64 become more widely adopted, we expect to be able to do more and more in the browser in combination with LLMs, so a lot of…
2025 · blog.kuzudb.com · its alternatives →
- 9
PinMyPrompt▲103Pin ChatGPT prompts to specific web pages for easy access
2023 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 10
ChatSEO▲56I built this after getting frustrated with digging through Google Search Console tables and exports just to decide what to work on next to do the SEO of my first project (recipe mobile app). ChatSEO connects to Google Search Console and lets you ask questions in plain language (e.g. pages close to page 1, keywords losing traction, or what actions are likely to have the biggest impact). Under the hood, it combines GSC data with external keyword and SERP data to prioritize SEO actions instead of just showing dashboards. It’s still early: onboarding is basic, recommendations can be noisy, and…
Jan 2026 · chatseo.app · its alternatives →
- 11SH
I built this tool to help me find interesting discussions on Hacker News. I love reading HN discussions almost more than the articles themselves. However, I found that full text search, although highly performant, is not always good at surfacing interesting discussions on a certain topic -- especially if you don't know what to search for exactly. I built this by scraping the most recent ~6 million posts (that's about 2 years of history) and putting the resulting posts and their vector embeddings into Postgres. Let me know what could be improved, and if you'd like a more detailed writeup of…
2024 · searchhacker.news · its alternatives →
- 12
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) chatbot powered by Weaviate - weaviate/Verba
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
- 14
Hey HN! I'm excited to share a tool I've been working on - a native Hacker News reader built with Rust and egui. Here's a screenshot: https://github.com/haojiang99/hacker_news_reader/blob/main/s.... As a daily HN reader, I've always struggled with keeping track of interesting posts I want to read later. Browser tabs pile up, bookmarks get forgotten, and I lose track of what I've already read. I needed a way to: 1. Browse HN efficiently (across all sections - hot, new, show, ask, jobs, best) 2. Quickly mark posts as "todo" for later reading 3. Mark posts as…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15IB
Hey all! I wanted to share this project I've been working on that can maybe help you or your developer friends out. I built a RAG system for our product a while back and didn't realize how easy they were to get started. So I put together my learnings into this online course. It's not quite ready but if you sign up and mention HackerNews, I can get you early access. I'm looking to get feedback on the following: (1) materials — is it engaging & did you learn something? (2) UI/UX of the platform — did you have any issues that prevented you from starting or finishing the tutorial? (3)…
2024 · takehomes.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Foldif▲29Stop losing your best ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini answers
Jun 2026 · foldif.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Hey HN, If you're like me you probably have hundreds of ChatGPT chats for each idea or project you have. And each one keeps it's unique context and details that are lost in the long list of chats in the sidebar. Since there is no way to search old chats in ChatGPT Web UI, I built this feature myself as a browser extension. In February, I released it and tried to apply freemium model and see how it works. I was ecstatic when I had a first sale in less than a week! That was first time anyone bought my product ever. Since then I got into top3 in Chrome Web Store for "search chatgpt history" and…
2024 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Hey everyone! I’m extremely excited to share a project I led for our company- Vectara. If you’re not familiar with us, we specialize in retrieval augmented generation, or RAG, allowing you to get the most accurate answers and summaries about your data. But more than that, we also do semantic search. And I’m proud to say I work with some really great engineers who ensure that we do that pretty darn well too! And that’s where this comes in. For my fellow React developers out there, this one’s for you! Our new ReactSearch component allows you to add a semantic search UI, powered by our…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Hi HN! Vectara is a "batteries included" retrieval augmented generation platform. You can upload your rich text documents like PDFs, HTML pages, word docs, etc, or semi-structured JSON and Vectara handles the text and metadata extraction, segmentation, vector embedding, and vector storage, and keyword storage. You can ask a question or perform a search in the UI or via our APIs and Vectara will automatically handle the vectorization, structured metadata filtering, vector+keyword retrieval, hybrid blending, and generative summarization of the results. We're focusing on building and…
2023 · vectara.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Hey HN, Like many of you, I’ve been using ChatGPT to brainstorm, debug code, and even plan projects. But as the number of conversations grew, I found myself scrolling endlessly trying to find old chats. It was frustrating and unproductive. So, I built PinFold – a Chrome extension to help manage and organize ChatGPT conversations. With PinFold, you can: Pin important chats for quick access. Organize conversations into folders (e.g., personal vs. work-related). Declutter your ChatGPT history and boost productivity. It's privacy-focused: no data is sent to external servers – everything is…
2024 · pinfold.me · its alternatives →
- 21
A web-extension that takes the URL you're visiting and searches submissions on other websites. - viorelsfetea/commenter
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
- 23
Access ChatGPT everywhere and summarize any webpage.
2023 · its alternatives →
- 24
Hey HN, As a heavy ChatGPT user, I often want to explore my chat history, look for things I've already asked, keep favorite chats, and much more. ChatGPT doesn't even offer search capability (except in mobile version). So I decided to build one myself. It runs locally, so no sensitive data leaks. You only need to export your ChatGPT conversations, and put it in the `data` folder. Optionally setup OpenAI API key and it will create embeddings for semantic search. *Important* - it's not a desktop app (at least, not yet) - it's a python code with a browser interface that I've only tested on…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- Turn any website into a knowledge base for LLMs alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →