scira README

The project's README from github.com/zaidmukaddam/scira. As one markdown file: README.md.

Scira

Research at the speed of thought. The agentic research platform that plans, retrieves, and cites — so you can think faster.

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Scira


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🔗 Try Scira at scira.ai

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Vercel AI SDK Exa AI Upstash
Vercel AI SDK Exa AI Upstash
For AI model integration and streaming For web search and content retrieval For serverless Redis and rate limiting

How It Works

  1. Ask anything — Type a question, upload a PDF, or paste a URL. Pick a mode or let Scira decide for you.
  2. Scira plans & retrieves — The agent breaks your question into sub-tasks, searches live sources, and cross-checks the evidence.
  3. Get cited answers — Receive a grounded answer with inline citations. Click any source to verify it yourself.

Features

Core Capabilities

Search Modes (17 modes)

Mode Description
Web Search the entire web with AI-powered analysis
Chat Talk to the model directly, no search
X Real-time posts, trends, and conversations
Stocks Market data, charts, and financial analysis
Code Get context about languages and frameworks
Academic Research papers, citations, and scholarly sources
Extreme Deep research with multiple sources and analysis
Reddit Discussions, opinions, and community insights
GitHub Repositories, code, and developer discussions
Crypto Cryptocurrency research powered by CoinGecko
Prediction Prediction markets from Polymarket and Kalshi
YouTube Video summaries, transcripts, and analysis
Spotify Search songs, artists, and albums
Connectors Search Google Drive, Notion & OneDrive (Pro)
Memory Your personal memory companion (Pro)
Voice Conversational AI with real-time voice (Pro)
XQL Advanced X query language for tweet analysis (Pro)

Tools (28 tools)

Search & Retrieval

Financial & Market Data

Location & Travel

Media & Entertainment

Productivity & Utilities

LLM Models Supported

Built with

Deploy your own

Deploy with Vercel

Set Scira as your default search engine

  1. Open the Chrome browser settings:

    • Click on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser.
    • Select "Settings" from the dropdown menu.

  2. Go to the search engine settings:

    • In the left sidebar, click on "Search engine."
    • Then select "Manage search engines and site search."

  3. Add a new search engine:

    • Click on "Add" next to "Site search."

  4. Set the search engine name:

    • Enter Scira in the "Search engine" field.

  5. Set the search engine URL:

    • Enter https://scira.ai?q=%s in the "URL with %s in place of query" field.

  6. Set the search engine shortcut:

    • Enter sh in the "Shortcut" field.

  7. Set Default:

    • Click on the three dots next to the search engine you just added.
    • Select "Make default" from the dropdown menu.

After completing these steps, you should be able to use Scira as your default search engine in Chrome.

Local development

Run via Docker

The application can be run using Docker in two ways:

  1. Make sure you have Docker and Docker Compose installed on your system
  2. Create a .env file based on .env.example with your API keys
  3. Run the following command in the project root:
    docker compose up
  4. The application will be available at http://localhost:3000
Using Docker Directly
  1. Create a .env file based on .env.example with your API keys
  2. Build the Docker image:
    docker build -t scira.app .
  3. Run the container:
    docker run --env-file .env -p 3000:3000 scira.app

The application uses a multi-stage build process to minimize the final image size and implements security best practices. The production image runs on Node.js LTS with Alpine Linux for a minimal footprint.

Run with Node.js

To run the application locally without Docker:

  1. Sign up for accounts with the required AI providers:
    • OpenAI (required)
    • Anthropic (required)
    • Exa (required for web search feature)
  2. Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in your API keys
  3. Install dependencies:
    bun install
  4. Start the development server:
    bun dev
  5. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser

License

This project is licensed under the AGPLv3 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

scira (zaidmukaddam/scira)

Searching Database…

11.9K ·GitHub
Scira
What is this?Scira (formerly MiniPerplx) is an AI-powered search engine that plans a research strategy, retrieves information from the web and many other sources, and answers questions with clickable inline citations.
Is this just a chat wrapper or does it actually search the web?It is a full agentic platform: it breaks your question into sub-tasks, searches live sources via tools like Exa, Firecrawl, Tavily and Parallel, cross-checks evidence, and returns a grounded answer with sources you can click to verify.
How do I run this myself?Run it with Docker Compose (create a .env from .env.example, then docker-compose up), or build/run the Docker image directly, or run it locally with Node.js by copying .env.example to .env.local, installing dependencies, and running the dev server.
Which API keys do I need before I can use it?At minimum you need OpenAI and Anthropic API keys, plus an Exa key if you want the web search feature; many other optional tools (Firecrawl, Tavily, CoinGecko, Spotify, TMDB, etc.) need their own keys for extra search modes.
Are all 17 search modes free to use?No — several modes like Connectors, Memory, Voice, and XQL are marked Pro-only, so the full feature set requires a paid plan even though the code itself is open source.
Is there a hosted version or must I self-host?There is a hosted version at scira.ai, and since it's AGPL-3.0 you can also self-host it yourself and bring your own models.
What's the catch with the AGPL-3.0 license?AGPL-3.0 means if you run a modified version as a network service, you must also release your source code, which is stricter than a permissive license like MIT.
Can I set Scira as my default browser search engine?Yes, the README gives step-by-step instructions for adding Scira as a custom search engine in Chrome using the hosted URL and a shortcut like 'sh'.
What makes the Extreme mode different from the regular Web mode?Extreme mode is a deep-research agent that performs multi-step planning across multiple sources and includes code execution with artifact storage, going further than a single-pass web search.
How many AI models can I choose from?Scira supports dozens of models across providers including xAI Grok, OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Qwen, Mistral, DeepSeek, GLM, Cohere, Kimi, Minimax, and more.
Can it read PDFs or analyze uploaded files?Yes, you can upload a PDF or other files and the file query search tool performs semantic search over documents like PDF, CSV, DOCX, and Excel using Cohere embeddings and reranking.
What are similar projects?sim, chatbot, Vane, rankme.fast, next-ai-draw-io, LibreChat, NextChat, FastGPT
Which topics is it in?search-engine, vercel, tailwindcss, multimodal, nextjs, agpl, chatbot, pdf, rag, deepseek, gemini, generative-ai
Creator
zaidmukaddam
Size
22.2 MB
Stars
11.9K
Updated
CommitAug 12
Age
2y
Commits · 90 Days