AISight

The private alternative to Perplexity.
Search the web. Get answers on-device.

  

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A native iOS 26 / macOS 26 answer engine that combines web search with on-device AI. AISight searches the web via a privacy-respecting SearXNG instance (default provided, or self-host your own) and synthesizes answers using Apple's FoundationModels framework (Apple Intelligence) — all AI processing happens privately on your device. Zero external dependencies.

Why?

Every major answer engine — Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot — sends your queries to cloud AI services, building a profile of what you search. AISight takes a different approach: the AI runs entirely on your device via Apple Intelligence, so your questions never leave your phone or Mac. You control the search backend too (self-hosted SearXNG), meaning no single company sees both what you search and what you ask about it. It's the answer engine for people who think privacy shouldn't be a premium feature.

Features

• Answer factual, encyclopedic, and "how-to" questions with cited sources
• Deep Search — multiple AI research passes for complex questions
• Search the web via SearXNG (aggregates Google, Bing, Brave, and more)
• On-device AI synthesis — your data is never sent to a cloud AI service
• Stream responses token by token with inline citations
• Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) for multi-engine result ranking
• Persist query history locally via SwiftData
• Universal app — runs natively on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Bring your own SearXNG server → everything is free. Unlimited searches, Deep Search, all features — no purchase needed. You're running your own infrastructure, so there's nothing to pay for.

AISight Pro ($4.99, one-time) unlocks unlimited searches and Deep Search on our default server — and supports indie development.

What it cannot do

• Multi-hop reasoning beyond Deep Search (on-device model is ~3B parameters)
• Real-time news with high freshness guarantees
• Complex math or coding assistance
• Image understanding (text-only)
• Work without internet (search requires connectivity)
• Run on devices older than iPhone 15 Pro / iOS 26

Requirements

• Xcode 26+
• iOS 26.0 / macOS 26.0 deployment target
• Apple Intelligence enabled on device
• A SearXNG instance (local Docker or remote)

Quick Start

1. Set up SearXNG (local development)

A Docker Compose setup is included for local development:

cd searxng
docker compose up -d

This starts SearXNG on http://localhost:8888 with Google, Bing, Brave, and Wikipedia enabled.

For production, deploy your own instance following the SearXNG Docker guide.

2. Configure and build

1. Open AISight/AISight.xcodeproj in Xcode 26
2. The app ships with a default SearXNG instance — for local development, change the URL to http://localhost:8888 in the app's Settings tab or in AISight/App/AppConfig.swift
3. Select your target (iPhone simulator or My Mac) and Cmd+R

macOS note: Add the "Outgoing Connections (Client)" capability in Signing & Capabilities for network access.

Physical device note: Replace localhost with your Mac's local IP in the app's Settings tab.

Architecture

User Query → SearXNG (search) → ContentFetcher (HTML→text) → FoundationModels (on-device AI) → Streamed Answer with Citations → SwiftData (history)

Layer	Path	Responsibility
App	AISight/App/	Entry point, config, global state
Core/AI	AISight/Core/AI/	FoundationModels session, Deep Search pipeline
Core/Search	AISight/Core/Search/	SearXNG API client, RRF ranking, models
Core/Fetching	AISight/Core/Fetching/	URL → clean text extraction
Core/Persistence	AISight/Core/Persistence/	SwiftData models and store
Features	AISight/Features/	Search, History, Onboarding, Settings
UI/Components	AISight/UI/Components/	CitationText, SourceCard, etc.

Tech stack: Swift 6, SwiftUI, FoundationModels, SwiftData, URLSession. No external packages.

Privacy

All AI inference runs on-device via Apple Intelligence. Data that leaves your device:

1. Search queries sent to a SearXNG instance
2. HTTP requests to source URLs for content fetching

No analytics. No tracking. No third-party AI services.

Contributing

Contributions welcome. Open an issue before submitting large PRs.

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Built by a solo developer in Spain. Entire infrastructure costs under €5/month.

License

MIT