freectl

Lightning-fast command-line tool and web UI for finding cool stuff from various data sources.

This tool is still in active development and should definitely not be exposed on the public internet.

Features

• 🔍 Fuzzy search through cached data sources
• 📦 Cache and update data sources locally
• 📊 Generate statistics about cached content
• 🌐 Web interface for searching
• 🎨 Beautiful TUI interface
• 🔄 Automatic source updates
• 🌓 Toggleable dark theme
• 🐳 Docker support

What does this actually do?

(Again, freectl is in active development. There are glaring bugs.)

freectl is a handy tool for downloading data sources containing a lot of URLs (like "awesome" lists) and making them searchable.

It uses a very scrappy, semi-home-grown markdown link parser to extract URLs, titles/descriptions, and categories by looking for common patterns in markdown lists. This happens while searching, so there is no indexing process - data sources are fuzzy-searched directly with a configurable query delay. This might not scale well if you add too many data sources!

There is also a basic favouriting system. Favourites and settings are stored locally as JSON files in ~/.config/freectl/.

The frontend is (in theory) embedded into the Go binary, so it should be pretty portable.

Which data source types are supported?

1. Most Git-hosted "awesome lists" (freectl add https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy --type git)
2. Reddit wikis (freectl add https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/movies_and_tv --type reddit_wiki --name "/r/Piracy Movies & TV")

Handy trick

1. Add a list-of-lists like this one
2. Search it for lists using the web UI
3. Click the kebab menu next to a result
4. Click "Add data source" to download it and make it searchable too :)

Installation

From Source

git clone https://github.com/Igglybuff/freectl.git
cd freectl
go build
chmod +x freectl
mv freectl ~/.local/bin/freectl

Using Go

go install github.com/Igglybuff/freectl@latest

Using Docker

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t freectl .

# Run the container
docker run -d \
  --name freectl \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v ~/.local/cache/freectl:/root/.local/cache/freectl \
  -v ~/.config/freectl:/root/.config/freectl \
  freectl

The Docker container exposes port 8080 and mounts two volumes:

• ~/.local/cache/freectl for data source caches
• ~/.config/freectl for storing favorites

Using Docker Compose

Create a docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3.8'
services:
  freectl:
    build: .
    container_name: freectl
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ~/.local/cache/freectl:/root/.local/cache/freectl
      - ~/.config/freectl:/root/.config/freectl
    restart: unless-stopped

Then run:

# Start the service
docker compose up -d

# View logs
docker compose logs -f

# Stop the service
docker compose down

Usage

Add

# Add a Git repository
freectl add https://github.com/Igglybuff/awesome-piracy \
  --name awesome-piracy \
  --type git

# Add a Reddit wiki
freectl add https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/movies_and_tv \
  --type reddit_wiki \
  --name "/r/Piracy Movies & TV"

Update

# Update all cached data sources
freectl update

Search

# Search in all cached data sources
freectl search "query"

# Search in a specific data source
freectl search "query" --source source-name

Stats

This feature is still a work in progress.

# Show stats for a specific data source
freectl stats --source source-name

Web interface

# Start the web interface on port 8080
freectl serve --port 8080

The web interface is available at http://localhost:8080 by default. You can change the port using the --port flag.

Configuration

The tool uses the following default paths:

• ~/.local/cache/freectl for data source caches
• ~/.config/freectl/config.json for configuration

Development

Prerequisites

• Go 1.24
• Git

Building

go build

To do list

Done

• max. results per page setting doesn't work
• separate link names and descriptions into distinct fields and render them differently in the UI
• fix the readme, some of the info is just wrong
• add setting to change max fuzzy match score
• fix stats page
• update docker instructions with settings volume mapping
• support for reddit megathreads/wikis
• "library" page with curated data sources, 1-click downloads
• add a favicon
• support for HackerNews top 5000

Bugs

• filter out items under misleading headings like "Contents"
• after adding/removing repos from Settings, page needs to refresh before selecting categories from Search drop-down
• stats page is broken again
• this blogs list didn't parse at all: https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs

Features

Core

• support for blogrolls
• support for RSS/OPML
• support for bookmarks import (HTML/XML)
• support for Hoarder/Linkwarden sync
• support for personal knowledge stores (Obsidian vaults etc.)
• support for open directories
• support for other useful data sources
• support for book databases
• implement a search index using bleve as an alternative to fuzzy-search
• advanced search queries
• rest API
• user authentication via OIDC
• custom markdown parsing rules for non-standard repos
• group data sources into "collections"
• semantic search using word embedding model

Improvements

• alternative search results layout + link previews
• mobile-compatible web UI
• search history
• search suggestions/autocomplete
• support for sending links to Hoarder/LinkWarden
• make the repository tag clickable in search results
• support for bulk-adding repos
• implement virustotal URL scanning (vt-go is unmaintained so will have to make my own)
• add reachability check button to quickly see if a link is dead
• add share button
• export favourites as OPML/CSV/JSON/HTML
• add a --config arg to use a custom config file path
• add a set command to add CLI support for changing settings like the web UI can
• add viper to configure settings via environment variables
• UI improvements

SDLC

• set up github actions CI pipeline with multi-arch release
• create AUR pkg
• SAST scan in CI
• pre-commit hooks

Meta

• publish a website
• post about this on reddit or whatever
• get bored, give up, leave unmaintained for 3-5 years, and archive the repository

Technology

• Go, JS, HTML, CSS
• charmbracelet/bubbletea and charmbracelet/bubbles for the TUI
• charmbracelet/lipgloss for logging
• sahilm/fuzzy for search
• sp13/cobra for the CLI
• PuerkitoBio/goquery for HTML parsing
• yuin/goldmark for Markdown parsing and rendering

Similar projects

• mrkarezina/awesome-search - Closest thing I've found to this project
• trackawesomelist/trackawesomelist - Very similar fuzzy-search capability
• sindresorhus/awesome - Makes finding more lists very easy, pairs well with this project
• rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database - This will be a great data source to add

Author

• Website: iggly.xyz
• Mastodon: @Igglybuff
• Reddit: u/Wiggly_Poop

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

The Unlicense License - see LICENSE file for details.