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Tobias Lütke avatar

QMD

Local hybrid search engine for markdown notes, docs, and transcripts

  • Agent frameworks and tools
  • Productivity
  • Developer tools
View on GitHub

What it is

A command-line search tool that indexes folders of markdown notes, meeting transcripts, and documentation, then answers keyword or natural-language queries entirely on your machine. Under the hood it pairs BM25 keyword matching with vector search, then adds query expansion and LLM re-ranking, running GGUF models via node-llama-cpp. People who keep large personal or work knowledge bases use it directly from the terminal, or plug it into AI agents through JSON output and a built-in MCP server.

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Facts

Stars
30,506 GitHub stars.
30,506

Forks
1,918
Commits
784
Contributors
91
Language
TypeScript
License
MIT
Last commit
Oct 15, 2026
On GitHub since
December 2025
First release
February 2026
Platforms
macOS, Windows, Linux, CLI
Self-hostable
No
Author
Tobias Lütke
Tags
  • mcp-server
  • semantic-search
  • search-engine
  • local-ai
  • knowledge-base
  • rag

Last synced from GitHub on Oct 20, 2026

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What people are saying

Updated Oct 21, 2026
  • Hacker NewsQMD - Quick Markdown SearchJan 20, 2026 · 25 points · 7 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“One of the best things I did recently was to archive all @gordon.bsky.social's Substack posts into my personal digital library. I index, embed and query it…”Aug 1, 2026 · 8 likes · 2 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“cheap, fast local embeddings for lookups. Then again based on your ability to instantaneously recall things this might not be a big bump relative to your own…”May 3, 2026 · 3 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsQMD – Quick Markdown SearchJan 19, 2026 · 3 points · 1 comment (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“New to me. Gratis link. I wonder how much this scales, how much Bluesky stuff I can dump in here before it gets too bad.”Feb 25, 2026 · 3 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“bmann (/bmann) starred tobi/qmd (/tobi/qmd) · August 1, 2026 07:36 tobi/qmd (/tobi/qmd) mini cli search engine for your docs, knowledge bases, meeting notes…”Aug 1, 2026 · 1 like · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“is one solution I've seen mentioned a lot - hopefully I can try it out soon. Badass that its literally the Shopify CEO's personal project”Mar 5, 2026 · 2 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Now that Obsidian has a headless client, you know what works really well with it? — it’s a much better search than what Obsidian provides, and you can…”Mar 2, 2026 · 2 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Hacker NewsQMD – Quick Markdown SearchJan 25, 2026 · 2 points · 0 comments (opens Hacker News in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“qmd (Query Markup Documents) indexes your notes with full-text search, vector search, and LLM re-ranking, all running locally with both CLI and MCP support.”May 7, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“RT @jontsai: Have you tried out qmd at any point before you built GBrain?”Apr 10, 2026 · 0 likes · 1 reply (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“build agent memory based on”Mar 30, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Another locally focused project that uses small models and semantic search for your own documents”Mar 11, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“QMD - Query Markup Documents An on-device search engine for everything you need to remember. Index your markdown notes, meeting transcripts, documentation…”Mar 1, 2026 · 1 like · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“QMD is a close self-hosted fit for Markdown repositories: collections, hybrid search, reranking, document reading, and HTTP MCP are built in. Its HTTP…”Sep 29, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“Yes i did myself too, at explore.ssp.sh. Or Tobi did another one and theres man more, thats the beauty of owning your data.”May 2, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)
  • Bluesky“tobi/qmd mini cli search engine for your docs, knowledge bases, meeting notes, whatever. Tracking current sota approaches while being all local QMD - Query…”Apr 8, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 replies (opens Bluesky in a new tab)