Ship #2

Vistara - Local search engine

QoL improvements and made sure it will work
same story of ship #1

I made a Search engine for search through our files. VISTARA(means Wide in malayalam language)
Why ?
I made this because file explorer is not good to find a file in case if we saved it as Untitled(34).pdf thats y I made Vistara.
I couldnt make it EXE, due to dependency size.
It was challenging to index all our files and make sure sensitive content is safe. and i did it 😁✌️

HTML CSS + Pyside6 Gui, and some freaking stuff inside this project . read the README for more details

2 devlogs
2h
7.59x multiplier
11 Stardust

Try project → See source code →

@zrl approved your project · about 2 months ago

This project was vetted by Shipwrights and is now up for voting. You can ship again after making more updates.

Feedback

Hey Paachu,
Awesome project! I'd love to see what you make in the future!
For any other questions, DM @sl4shed or create a ticket in Slack—#ask-the-shipwrights.

Shipwright walkthrough

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@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

40m 41s logged

Vistara Local file search engine

Major update

No more waiting for hugginface model to use Vistara

its now bundled with Vistara 🥳

@xvcf returned your project · about 2 months ago

This needs changes before we can consider it shipped. Review the Shipwright feedback, make updates, then ship again.

Feedback

Hey there,
your project seems to integrate Hugging Face. We do not accept Hugging Face, because
- there is no guarantee that they will provide their services free forever.
- it does not teach the user how the project would usually be hosted.
Please change the affected parts of your ship and resubmit!

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask in #ask-the-shipwrights on Slack!

Shipwright walkthrough

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@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

49m 42s logged

Vistara Local file Search engine

QoL improvements I had made

Open file directly from search -You can open the file directly from vistara. no need to Go to the Freaking path
Changed file Detection -If a file is changed, It is treated as Changed . Not New file.
Sensitive files detection -To avoid exposing contents like Passwords,Api keys,Tokens and even Address of ur loved ones

@zrl returned your project · about 2 months ago

This needs changes before we can consider it shipped. Review the Shipwright feedback, make updates, then ship again.

Feedback

Hey there, the app just crashes when i launch it. So, i can't approve this ship. Fix this, resubmit, and you should be good!
For any questions, send a message in #ask-the-shipwrights on Slack

Shipwright walkthrough

@zrl returned your project · about 2 months ago

This needs changes before we can consider it shipped. Review the Shipwright feedback, make updates, then ship again.

Feedback

Hey there, this project looks pretty cool. However, in the release notes you mention that Linux/Mac are supported, but when i try to launch the app after running the installer, it crashes instantly. Fix this, resubmit, and you should be good!
For any questions, drop a message in #ask-the-shipwrights or DM @sl4shed on Slack!

Shipwright walkthrough

@RealYoCelestial returned your project · about 2 months ago

This needs changes before we can consider it shipped. Review the Shipwright feedback, make updates, then ship again.

Feedback

Hey Paachu, thanks for participating in Stardance! However, you seem to have used a lot of AI in your readme. Please rewrite it yourself, as we would like to see how you worked on the project! Also, please make the demo into an executable file, like a .exe or similar, in a GitHub releases. Please fix these things and it should be good to go, thanks!

Shipwright walkthrough

Ship #1

@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

I made a Search engine for search through our files. VISTARA(means Wide in malayalam language)
Why ?
I made this because file explorer is not good to find a file in case if we saved it as Untitled(34).pdf thats y I made Vistara.
I couldnt make it EXE, due to dependency size.
It was challenging to index all our files and make sure sensitive content is safe. and i did it 😁✌️

HTML CSS + Pyside6 Gui, and some freaking stuff inside this project . read the README for more details

7 devlogs
7h
9.02x multiplier
59 Stardust
Frictionless

Try project → See source code →

Open comments for this post

@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

1h 51m logged

VISTARA - Day 5

ready for ship

added UI !!!!

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@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

38m 39s logged

VISTARA — Day 4 Devlog

Date: August 18, 2026
Focus: Semantic Search + Hybrid Search

Today I expanded VISTARA from keyword-based search into semantic search, allowing it to understand the meaning behind queries.

Completed

Sentence Transformers integration
all-MiniLM-L6-v2 embedding model
384-dimensional embeddings
Embedding generation and storage
Cosine similarity search
Semantic result ranking
Compact semantic snippets
Hybrid keyword + semantic search
Sensitive-file filtering in semantic search
Combined FTS5 and semantic results

Result

VISTARA can now search using both exact keywords and semantic meaning, making the search much more useful for natural-language queries.

The search engine backend is now essentially complete.

Semantic Search coming soon

Open comments for this post

@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

1h 27m 58s logged

Vistara — Day 3 Devlog

Date: August 17, 2026
Focus: Keyword Search + Chunking

Today I expanded Local Google from basic keyword search into chunk-based search.

Completed

SQLite FTS5 keyword search
BM25 relevance ranking
Sensitive-file filtering
Search result formatting
500-word text chunking
chunks database table
chunks_fts FTS5 index
Backfilled chunks for existing documents
Chunk-based keyword search
Search-result snippets from matching chunks
Best matching chunk per document to reduce duplicates

Result

Local Google can now search through document chunks instead of treating every document as one giant piece of text.

The original Day 4 chunking work was moved into Day 3 because most of it was completed today.

VISTARA — Day 2: File Ingestion 🔎

VISTARA is getting smarter today.

It started as a file scanner that could tell me where my files are. Now it’s learning how to actually read what’s inside them. 🗿

VISTARA can currently process:

.txt
.md
.pdf
.docx

It can scan across the PC while skipping unnecessary system and development folders, keeping the focus on useful documents.

It also uses SHA-256 hashing to detect whether a document is:

🆕 New
🔄 Changed
😴 Unchanged

The first full scan found 7,462 supported files. 💀

Now VISTARA is going through them one by one, extracting their contents and storing the information in SQLite.

Basically:

"Where tf did I save that file?"

becomes:

"VISTARA, find it." 🗿

And yes… VISTARA is currently eating thousands of files, so my laptop is getting its own workout. 💀🔥

Next up: SQLite FTS5 keyword search.

VISTARA — a local file search engine built to make finding things on your PC less annoying.

Open comments for this post

@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

26m 23s logged

First Look Scanning on progress

Open comments for this post

@Paachu on Vistara · about 2 months ago

49m 4s logged

Project Skeleton Day 1