yjid/kensaku

Fast, light, and efficient. Find anything on your computer.
Search 100,000 file names in about a millisecond, using roughly 12 MB of memory.
Search inside documents, images, and code too. Nothing leaves your machine.
Install ·
Why Kensaku ·
Features ·
Performance ·
MCP ·
Docs ·
Contribute
## Find it the way you remember it
You don't remember the filename. You remember what was in it.
The PDF about database indexing, saved as notes-final-2.pdf.
The log line from the failed deploy, somewhere in a folder of logs.
The screenshot with a CUDA error, which has no useful name at all.
Type what you remember. Kensaku searches names, text inside files, and meaning, and shows the match with the words highlighted. Open it with Enter.
## What Kensaku does that the others don't
Filename tools are everywhere. Reading inside your files — locally, instantly, and for free — is not.
| | Kensaku | Everything | Listary | PowerToys Run |
| Filename search, milliseconds | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Full text inside PDF/DOCX/EPUB… | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Text inside screenshots & images (OCR) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Find by meaning ("the PDF about indexing") | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Natural-language time ("screenshots from last week") | ✅ | ❌ | partial | ❌ |
| Your AI agents can search it (MCP) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Launcher behavior (summon, type, Enter) | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Open source (MIT) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Spotlight and Raycast are excellent but macOS-only; Alfred's content search and AI are paid tiers. Kensaku is one app, three platforms, free and MIT-licensed.
Three things worth trying on day one:
1. Screenshot archaeology. You know you saw that error in a screenshot. Kensaku read the pixels — search the error text.
2. Describe, don't recall. "big videos from last month" is a valid query. No filters to click.
3. Give your AI agent eyes. Claude or Cursor can search this same index over MCP — read-only, local, no cloud.
## Features
Fast
Filename search across ~100,000 files in a few milliseconds on a warm cache. Method and numbers are in Performance.
Results update as you type. There is no separate search page.
Incremental indexing: changed files are picked up without rescanning the whole disk.
Finds more
Names, full text, fuzzy matches that tolerate typos, and meaning, in one search.
Documents: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, EPUB, ODT/ODS/ODP, RTF, plain text, code, and logs, including CJK text.
Images: text is read with Tesseract. An optional, more accurate PP-OCRv6 engine is available in Settings.
Precise
Filters and sort: Best match, Newest, Oldest, Largest, Name.
Time travel: "last Tuesday", "3 days ago", "last week", "today", "yesterday".
A query language when you want it (below).
A real launcher
Starts hidden in the tray and summons with a keystroke. Recents are ranked by what you actually opened, and they survive restarts.
Space previews (Quick Look) for PDFs, images, and text. Grid or list layout. Full keyboard navigation.
Works with AI agents
Compatible agents can search the same local index over MCP. Read-only by default. See Connect AI agents.
Private
No account, no telemetry, no cloud search. Your index stays in your OS config directory.
Pleasant to use