Memex: Your Second Brain for Web Browsing
Overview
The Memex project introduces an innovative browser extension designed as a personal memex machine, enhancing your web browsing experience. This extension efficiently tracks all your online activities, helping you build a personalized knowledge base. With the power of AI, Memex empowers users to easily retrieve this valuable information whenever needed, enhancing memory and learning potential.
What is a Memex?
The concept of Memex was first envisioned by Vannevar Bush in 1945. He imagined a futuristic device for personal use, functioning as a mechanized library and private file storage, where all books, records, and communications of an individual could be stored and accessed swiftly. Essentially, it serves as an extended and intimate supplement to human memory.
Features
- Seamless Content Capture: Memex effortlessly captures both the content and metadata of the web pages you visit.
- Personalized Knowledge Base: All the captured information is organized into a personalized knowledge base stored locally on your device.
- AI-Powered Retrieval: The AI component of Memex assists users in retrieving stored knowledge swiftly and effectively.
How It Works
When you navigate the internet, Memex injects a script into the web pages to capture the textual content. This collected data is forwarded to a backend service-worker for processing. The service-worker segments the content and stores it within a structured database. The information in this database can be accessed via a chat interface, designed to answer your queries using the stored knowledge.
Getting Started
Build & Import Extension
To begin using Memex, first build the extension files into the dist/ folder:
npm install
npm run build # or npm run watch
Follow the link to Load the extension.
Start the Knowledge Base Server
At present, the LangchainJs library does not support browser runtime fully. Therefore, Memex requires a backend server for the Knowledge Base.
Set up the environment:
export TOKENIZERS_PARALLELISM=false
export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
cd server
FLASK_APP=server flask run
Start Using
Once set up, start using the Memex browser extension to enhance your web experience:
- As you browse, Memex will automatically capture and store text content from the web pages you visit in your individualized knowledge base, along with the relevant metadata.
- To retrieve information from your browsing history, open the chat by clicking the Memex icon, input your question, and hit Enter or Send. Memex will utilize AI to search your knowledge base and deliver the most pertinent information based on your inquiry.