VESTI: Your Self-Hosted AI Conversation Archive

Ever had that moment where you know you had a brilliant solution from ChatGPT or Claude a few weeks back, but now you can't find it? Or maybe you want to keep a private, searchable record of all your AI interactions without relying on a third-party service? That's the exact problem VESTI solves.

It's a self-hosted knowledge base that automatically saves and organizes every conversation you have with AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. Think of it as a personal, private archive for all those useful code snippets, debugging sessions, and brainstorming threads that would otherwise get lost in the chat history abyss.

What It Does

VESTI is a lightweight web application you run on your own machine or server. It acts as a central hub that captures your conversations from supported AI platforms (starting with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude), stores them locally in a database, and makes them fully searchable. You can browse by date, by AI model, or by the content of the conversations themselves.

Why It's Cool

The real value is in ownership and organization. Instead of your valuable insights being locked inside a chat interface with limited search, VESTI gives you complete control. All your data stays with you. The search functionality means you can find that specific Python regex pattern or architecture advice in seconds, not by endlessly scrolling.

It's also built with a straightforward, developer-friendly stack (like Go for the backend), making it easy to understand, contribute to, or modify if you want to add support for another AI tool. It fills a specific, practical need without unnecessary bloat.

How to Try It

The quickest way to get started is by heading over to the GitHub repository. You'll find all the setup instructions there.

Check out VESTI on GitHub

The repo includes a docker-compose.yml file for the simplest deployment. Essentially, you clone the repo, set up your environment variables (like your API keys for the AI services), and bring up the containers. The documentation walks you through connecting VESTI to your accounts so it can start ingesting your conversations.

Final Thoughts

As developers, we're using AI assistants more and more as thought partners and productivity tools. VESTI recognizes that the output of these conversations is a genuine asset—a kind of personal documentation. By self-hosting it, you keep that asset secure and make it genuinely useful long-term. It's a simple idea executed well, and it's the kind of tool that quietly becomes indispensable.

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