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Vane (formerly Perplexica)

A self-hosted AI answer engine that cites web sources and works with Ollama, local model servers, or cloud models.

Vane (formerly Perplexica) is a self-hosted AI search engine for people who want answers drawn from web results, with citations they can check. It runs on your own hardware through Docker or as a server application, with a browser interface and locally stored search history. The project is free and open source under the MIT license.

Web search uses SearxNG, either bundled with Vane or running as a separate instance. Searching the web requires an internet connection. For answers, Vane can use a local LLM through Ollama or an OpenAI-compatible server, including Lemonade. It also supports hosted models from OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and Groq; requests to those providers leave your machine.

Search can focus on web pages, discussions, or academic papers, and domain filters help when you want results from a particular site. Speed, Balanced, and Quality modes offer different levels of research depth. Image and video results are available alongside text results, and relevant searches can display weather, calculations, or stock information.

Vane also lets you upload PDFs, text files, and images to ask questions about their contents. Search suggestions help shape queries, while Discover offers articles and trending content to browse. An API makes its search and answers available to other applications, and Vane can be added to a browser's search bar.

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