Pastense Backend (FastAPI)

The local backend service for Pastense — a privacy-first semantic search layer for your browser history.

Overview

This FastAPI service powers the backend for the Pastense browser extension.
It:

• Receives page metadata from the extension (URL, title, text content)
• Generates semantic embeddings using the OpenAI API
• Stores them in a local SQLite (or FAISS) database
• Exposes /semantic_search, /page_visit, /show_results endpoints for querying and indexing
• Serves a simple frontend on the base URL (https://127.0.0.1:8000) using NiceGUI

Architecture

Extension → FastAPI → Local Vector Store (SQLite/FAISS)

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• OpenAI API key
• (Optional) platformdirs for cross-OS path handling (eg. DB_PATH=/Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/Pastense/visits.db on MacOS)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/pastense/fastapi.git
cd fastapi
python3 -m venv env # create virtual environment
source env/bin/activate # activate virtual environment
pip install -r requirements.txt # install requirements required to run this FastAPI

Run Locally

uvicorn main:app --reload

Feel free to add an issue in the issues tab for feature requests or architectural discussions.