msgbrowse Documentation
msgbrowse is a self-hosted, local-only browser, search engine, and (upcoming)
AI-editorialized journal over your personal Signal, iMessage, and WhatsApp
archives. It is a single pure-Go binary (go install, no C toolchain) that
renders a clean local UI over the output of three upstream exporters
(signal-export,
imessage-exporter, and
whatsapp-chat-exporter),
adds FTS5 keyword search and semantic search, and exposes an MCP server so AI
assistants can answer questions over your history. Nothing leaves your machine
except calls to the one OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoint you configure.
Where to start
- Getting Started — what msgbrowse is, installation, exporting your archives, and your first import.
- Features — browsing, search, the media gallery, status & backups, AI features, and the MCP server.
- Reference — the CLI, configuration, the security model, and troubleshooting.
- Development — local development (toolchain, make targets, the no-Node CSS pipeline, desktop-shell builds) and the macOS signing & notarization owner runbook.
- Architecture — the generated ADR and specification section (also reachable from the ADRs and Specifications tabs above).