Your bookmarks, finally searchable.
Ask in natural language — mindmark remembers what you saved.
100% local · No cloud · No API keys · Nothing leaves your machine
- Features
- Prerequisites
- Install
- Quick Start
- Usage
- How It Works
- Storage Layout
- Uninstall
- Development
- License
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
mindmark sync |
Auto-detect installed browsers and sync bookmarks directly — no export needed |
mindmark find "query" |
Semantic search over titles, folders, domains, and URL slugs — returns top-K with similarity scores |
mindmark open "query" |
Search and open the best match in your default browser |
mindmark enrich |
Fetch page content, extract text, embed summaries, and improve search relevance with page context |
mindmark stats |
Show index size, model info, top domains, and top folders |
mindmark index <file> |
Import bookmarks from an exported HTML file (legacy workflow) |
mindmark validate |
Check indexed bookmark URLs for stale links (HTTP 4xx/5xx or unreachable) and report them |
mindmark drop-index |
Delete the local SQLite index database (with confirmation unless --yes) |
Human output is concise and TTY-aware: color is enabled in real terminals, disabled automatically for pipes/CI, and can always be turned off with --no-color.
🔌 Works offline after the first run. Embeddings run on-device via fastembed (ONNX Runtime, ~130 MB one-time model download).
| Browser | macOS | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Edge | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Brave | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Firefox | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
mindmark reads bookmark files directly from browser data directories — no export step, no browser extension.
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Python 3.9+ | python.org/downloads — on Windows, check "Add Python to PATH" during setup |
| pip | Bundled with Python — verify with pip --version or pip3 --version |
| Internet | Needed only once to download the embedding model (~130 MB). Everything after that is offline |
💡 Windows tip — Python PATH
If you installed Python from the Microsoft Store, python and pip are already on your PATH.
If you installed from python.org, make sure you checked "Add Python to PATH" during setup.
pipx install mindmarkDon't have pipx?
pip install --user pipx && pipx ensurepath # then restart your terminalOr on macOS with Homebrew: brew install pipx
Alternative — pip with a virtual environment
macOS / Linux:
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install mindmarkWindows (PowerShell):
python -m venv .venv; .venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install mindmarkWindows (Command Prompt):
python -m venv .venv && .venv\Scripts\activate.bat
pip install mindmarkEditable install for development
git clone https://github.com/sukanth/mindmark.git
cd mindmark
pip install -e .[dev]mindmark syncThat's it — mindmark auto-detects your installed browsers, reads their bookmark files directly, and builds a searchable index. No manual export required.
First run downloads the embedding model (~130 MB) and caches it locally. Every run after that is instant and fully offline.
💡 See which browsers were detected
mindmark sync --list-browsersExample output:
Supported browsers
- Chrome
- Edge
- Brave
- Firefox
Detected profiles
- Chrome (Default) → ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks
- Edge (Default) → C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Bookmarks
💡 Sync a specific browser only
mindmark sync --browser chrome
mindmark sync --browser firefox
mindmark sync --browser edge
mindmark sync --browser brave💡 Alternative — import from an exported HTML file
If you prefer the manual export workflow, or need to import bookmarks from an unsupported browser:
| Browser | How to export |
|---|---|
| Edge | edge://favorites → ⋯ → Export favorites → save as HTML |
| Chrome | chrome://bookmarks → ⋮ → Export bookmarks → save as HTML |
| Firefox | Ctrl+Shift+O (Cmd+Shift+O on macOS) → Import and Backup → Export Bookmarks to HTML |
# macOS / Linux
mindmark index ~/Downloads/bookmarks.html
# Windows (PowerShell)
mindmark index "$env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\bookmarks.html"mindmark find "python async tutorial"
mindmark find "react hooks best practices" -k 5
mindmark find "helm chart examples" --domain github.com
mindmark find "docker compose setup" --folder devopsThe default find output uses an adaptive ASCII table that wraps titles, folders, URLs, and excerpts cleanly across supported terminals and platforms.
mindmark open "k8s cheat sheet" # opens the best match
mindmark find "docker setup" --open 2 # opens result #2 from the list💡 Tip — create a short alias
macOS / Linux — add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:
alias mm='mindmark open'
mm "docker setup"Windows — add to your PowerShell $PROFILE:
Set-Alias mm mindmark
mm open "docker setup"Pipe results into fzf, jq, Alfred, Raycast, PowerToys Run, or any tool that accepts JSON. find --json returns the same result object shape as the CLI uses internally:
# macOS / Linux
mindmark find "istio service mesh" --json | jq '.[].url'
# Windows (PowerShell)
mindmark find "istio service mesh" --json | ConvertFrom-Json | ForEach-Object { $_.url }[
{
"score": 0.842,
"title": "Istio / Service Mesh",
"url": "https://istio.io/latest/docs/",
"folder_path": "Work/Kubernetes",
"domain": "istio.io"
}
]If you add --excerpt, results that have enriched page content also include relevant_excerpt.
By default, mindmark prints professional human-readable output with status symbols, hints, and color when stdout is an interactive terminal:
→ Reading bookmarks from Chrome (Default), Firefox (default-release)
✓ Collected 812 bookmarks from 2 profile(s)
→ Syncing index at ~/.mindmark/index.db
✓ Sync complete: added=12, updated=3, removed=0, unchanged=797
Hint: Run 'mindmark find "your query"' to search your bookmarks.
Use --no-color when you want plain text even in a TTY. NO_COLOR=1 and MINDMARK_NO_COLOR=1 are also respected.
mindmark --no-color statsUse --json for stable machine-readable output from find, sync, stats, validate, and enrich.
mindmark sync reads bookmarks directly from your browser data directories. It's incremental — only new or changed bookmarks are re-embedded, making re-syncs near-instant.
mindmark sync # sync all detected browsers
mindmark sync --browser chrome # sync only Chrome
mindmark sync --browser firefox # sync only Firefox
mindmark sync --list-browsers # list detected browsers and profiles
mindmark sync --json # emit sync summary as JSONWhen you add new bookmarks in your browser, just run mindmark sync again — it will pick up only the changes.
💡 Note: If you change the embedding model with
--model, all bookmarks will be re-embedded on the next sync. Browser names are case-insensitive (e.g.,--browser Chromeand--browser chromeboth work).
sync --json returns a top-level summary, synced profiles, any warnings, plus db_path and model.
mindmark stats
mindmark stats --jsonExample human output:
Bookmarks: 812
Index: ~/.mindmark/index.db
Model: BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5
Top domains
github.com: 42
docs.python.org: 18
Top folders
Work/Kubernetes: 27
Reading: 14
stats --json returns:
{
"db_path": "/home/you/.mindmark/index.db",
"model": "BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5",
"top_domains": [{"count": 42, "domain": "github.com"}],
"top_folders": [{"count": 27, "folder": "Work/Kubernetes"}],
"total": 812
}Narrow down results without changing your query:
mindmark find "useful tools" --domain github.com # only github.com results
mindmark find "useful tools" --folder work/kusto # only bookmarks in matching folders
mindmark find "useful tools" -k 20 # return top 20 instead of 10
mindmark find "useful tools" --excerpt # include excerpts from enriched pages💡 Note: The
--excerptflag requires you to runmindmark enrichfirst to fetch and embed page content. See Augmented Index for details.
For the sync workflow, just rerun mindmark sync. It's incremental — only changed bookmarks are re-embedded.
For the index workflow, rerun mindmark index <file>. It clears and rebuilds the index. The model is cached, so re-indexing 800+ bookmarks takes only seconds.
Use drop-index to remove the local SQLite index database when you want a clean slate.
mindmark drop-index # asks for confirmation
mindmark drop-index --yes # skip confirmation
mindmark --db /path/to/index.db drop-indexUse validate to probe all indexed HTTP(S) bookmark URLs and identify stale ones (HTTP 4xx/5xx or unreachable hosts). Mindmark will report which bookmarks may be stale and where they are located, but does not modify them. You can then manually remove stale bookmarks from your browser or re-index after cleaning them up.
mindmark validate # identify all stale bookmarks
mindmark validate --timeout 5 # per-request timeout in seconds (default 8)
mindmark validate --workers 32 # parallel URL checks (default 16)
mindmark validate --json # emit validation summary as JSONNon-HTTP URLs (for example file: or browser-internal URLs) are skipped and not checked. validate --json returns total, checked, healthy, skipped, stale_count, and a stale array with title, url, folder_path, status_code, reason, and error.
mindmark sync --model BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5 # default, 384-dim
mindmark sync --model sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2
mindmark sync --model BAAI/bge-base-en-v1.5 # 768-dim, higher qualityThe --model flag also works with mindmark index. Switching models triggers a full re-embed automatically. See the fastembed supported models list.
Browser data files "python async tutorial"
(Chrome JSON / Firefox SQLite) │
│ │
▼ ▼
┌────────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
│ Detect & │─▶│ Embed │─▶│ Store │ │ Embed │
│ Parse │ │ (ONNX) │ │ (SQLite) │◀────│ query │
└────────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘
▲ │ │
│ ▼ ▼
only new/ ┌──────────────────────────┐
changed │ Dot-product similarity │
bookmarks │ → top-K results │
└──────────────────────────┘
- Detect — Auto-discover installed browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Firefox) and their profiles across macOS, Linux, and Windows.
- Parse — Read bookmark files natively: Chromium JSON format or Firefox
places.sqlite. No export step needed. - Diff — Hash each bookmark's content and compare against the existing index. Only new or changed bookmarks proceed to embedding.
- Embed — Each bookmark becomes a rich text string (
title | folder | domain | path) and is passed through a BGE/MiniLM ONNX model. Vectors are L2-normalized. - Store — Vectors live as
float32blobs in a single SQLite file. Abookmark_sourcestable tracks which browser contributed each bookmark, so multi-browser syncs don't conflict. - Search — Encode the query, compute dot products against all vectors, return the top-K.
By default, mindmark indexes only bookmark metadata: titles, folders, domains, and URL slugs. If you want deeper page context in search results, use the enrichment pipeline to fetch page content and embed summaries.
💡 Note: In order to be 100% local and lightweight enrichment uses extractive summarization (first 500 chars of page text) — no LLM, no text generation. This means:
- Only the opening content is embedded (relevant if key info is early; may miss content further down)
- Page content must already be well-written for excerpts to be useful (relies on natural sentence structure)
- Privacy and speed are preserved (no cloud calls, runs entirely locally)
Without enrichment, searching for "authentication strategies" on a bookmark titled "AWS Services" may miss it, even though the page discusses authentication. With enrichment, the page content is fetched and summarized, improving relevance.
- Enrich bookmarks (fetch page content and embed summaries):
mindmark enrich --limit 100 --workers 4
mindmark enrich --limit 100 --workers 4 --jsonOptions:
--limit N— Process top N pending URLs (default: all)--workers N— Parallel fetch workers (default: 8)--timeout S— Per-request timeout in seconds (default: 10.0)--refresh-failed— Retry previously failed enrichments
- Search with page context:
mindmark find "authentication strategies" --excerptWith --excerpt, results display the most relevant excerpt from the enriched page:
1. AWS Services
aws.amazon.com
⤵ To control user access to AWS resources, you must have an authentication strategy. AWS IAM provides fine-grained access control...
2. Auth0 Documentation
auth0.com
⤵ Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user or service. Authorization is the process of granting permissions...
The ⤵ symbol indicates content from the enriched page. Without enrichment, the symbol won't appear.
- Fetch — GET each bookmark URL with a user-agent, respecting HTTP 4xx/5xx and content-type guards.
- Extract — Strip boilerplate (nav, footer, scripts, styles) and extract plain text.
- Summarize — Use the first 500 characters of extracted text as the summary (extractive, no LLM).
- Embed — Embed the summary using the same ONNX model as bookmark metadata.
- Blend — At search time, combine base (bookmark metadata) and summary similarity scores:
- Blended score = 0.65 × base_score + 0.35 × summary_score
- Falls back to base-only if no summary exists.
- Excerpt — For readability, find and display the sentence from the summary most similar to the query.
Get a machine-readable enrichment run summary:
mindmark enrich --jsonExample output:
{
"before": {"pending": 1234, "complete": 450, "failed": 23},
"after": {"pending": 1134, "complete": 550, "failed": 25},
"complete": 100,
"failed": 2,
"reset_failed": 0,
"skipped": 0,
"status": "complete",
"total": 102
}
mindmark enrich --jsonstill performs enrichment when work is pending. To inspect counts without fetching pages, use the Python API (Index().enrichment_stats()).
- 100% local — Page fetching happens on your machine; no cloud service is used.
- Smart caching — Pages are re-fetched only if the page content changes (detected via content hash).
- Failure resilience — HTTP errors, timeouts, and JavaScript-only pages are logged as failed; sync and search continue without interruption.
- Privacy — No content leaves your machine; all processing is offline and local.
| What | macOS / Linux | Windows | Override |
|---|---|---|---|
| Index database | ~/.mindmark/index.db |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\mindmark\index.db |
global --db flag (before the command) or MINDMARK_DB env var |
| Home directory | ~/.mindmark/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\mindmark\ |
MINDMARK_HOME env var |
| Embedding model | ~/.cache/fastembed/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\fastembed\ |
Managed by fastembed |
pipx uninstall mindmark # if installed with pipx
pip uninstall mindmark # if installed with pipRemove stored data (optional)
The index and cached model are stored outside the package:
macOS / Linux:
rm -rf ~/.mindmark # index database
rm -rf ~/.cache/fastembed # cached embedding model (~130 MB)Windows (PowerShell):
Remove-Item -Recurse "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\mindmark" # index database
Remove-Item -Recurse "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\fastembed" # cached embedding modelIf you set a custom
MINDMARK_HOME, remove that directory instead.
Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for full details.
git clone https://github.com/sukanth/mindmark.git
cd mindmark
pip install -e .[dev]
pytest -qPublishing to PyPI
- Create an account at pypi.org
- Generate an API token at pypi.org/manage/account/token/
- Install build tools:
pip install build twine
python -m build
python -m twine upload --repository testpypi dist/*
pipx install --index-url https://test.pypi.org/simple/ mindmarkpython -m build
python -m twine upload dist/*Use __token__ as the username when prompted.
Alternative distribution methods
python -m build
gh release create v0.1.0 dist/*
# Users install:
pipx install https://github.com/sukanth/mindmark/releases/download/v0.1.0/mindmark-0.1.0-py3-none-any.whlpip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller --onefile -n mindmark -p src src/mindmark/__main__.py
# Creates: dist/mindmark (macOS/Linux) or dist/mindmark.exe (Windows)FROM python:3.11-slim
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir .
ENTRYPOINT ["mindmark"]docker build -t mindmark .
# Sync from browser bookmarks (mount browser data directories)
# Note: browser data paths vary — this example is for macOS Chrome
docker run --rm \
-v $HOME/.mindmark:/root/.mindmark \
-v "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome":/chrome:ro \
mindmark sync
# Or import from an exported HTML file
docker run --rm -v $HOME/.mindmark:/root/.mindmark \
-v $HOME/Downloads:/downloads mindmark \
index /downloads/bookmarks.htmlMIT — see LICENSE.
