What Is Otso

Otso is a local‑first toolkit that helps you own your content and activity across the web. It indexes your digital trails from dozens of sources and makes them searchable on your machine.

Current Components

These components are working today:

otso-indexer (Rust)

The indexer reads data from SQLite databases and builds a unified, searchable event store.

Configuration-driven — Add sources via sources.toml, no code changes needed
Parallel processing — Indexes multiple sources concurrently
Transaction-safe — Batch operations with automatic rollback on failure
Robust parsing — Handles 15+ timestamp formats automatically

otso-search (SvelteKit)

A web UI for searching your indexed data.

Full-text search — FTS5-powered search across all sources
Timeline histogram — Visual overview of your activity over time
Category filters — Filter by source type (reading, music, social, etc.)
Keyboard navigation — Arrow keys, Enter to open, Escape to close

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  SOURCE DATA (SQLite databases)                 │
│  Twitter, Pinboard, Spotify, GitHub, etc.       │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
                        ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  otso-indexer (Rust)                            │
│  Configurable via sources.toml                  │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
                        ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Event Store + FTS5 Search Index (SQLite)       │
└───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┘
                        ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  otso-search (SvelteKit)                        │
│  Timeline · Filters · Full-text search          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Planned Components

CLI — Commands for import, publish, and maintenance (otso import, otso publish)
Web dashboard — Compose posts, review imports, manage accounts
Site generator — Render posts with Microformats2 and Webmention support
Live API connectors — PESOS import from Mastodon, Bluesky, and more

Supported content types

The indexer extracts events matching these types:

Type	Examples
Bookmarks	Pinboard saves, Readwise highlights
Listens	Spotify plays, Last.fm scrobbles
Notes	Apple Notes, Notion pages
Posts	Tweets, toots, skeets
Photos	Apple Photos with location/description
Check-ins	Foursquare visits
Tasks	Things to-dos
Events	Calendar entries
Code	GitHub commits, issues, PRs

Visibility & privacy

Every item can carry a visibility: public, unlisted, private, or secret.

Public: included in search results
Unlisted: searchable but not in feeds
Private: visible only in local tools
Secret: excluded from search indexes entirely

The search projection enforces these rules—private and secret items are never indexed.

Quick mental model

Think of Otso as an append‑only event log plus projections:

Sources (SQLite databases with your data)
Events (normalized records in a unified store)
Projections (FTS5 search index, timeline views)

Projections are rebuildable. If something goes wrong, rebuild from the event store.