histre's first commit was on March 6, 2019. This page carries that date because it is the reason for everything that came after, and it is kept current as the product changes.
The tools went to the tinkerers
Knowledge tools are better than they have ever been, if you are a certain kind of person. You enjoy setting things up. You learn a syntax. You keep folders tidy, pick plugins, run a sync server, and you'd rather own the whole stack than trust anyone with it. For you, the last ten years have been a golden age.
Most people are not that person. They read a lot, they save things, they lose them, and they have forty browser tabs open because tabs are the only knowledge tool that asks nothing of them. They are nurses, teachers, buyers, lawyers, students, small-business owners. They are most of the people I know. The industry built nothing for them, because building for the tinkerers is easier and the tinkerers write the reviews.
I built histre for everyone else.
What that changes
Deciding who it is for decides almost everything else.
- It captures without asking. You should not have to remember to save. The extension keeps what you read, and the notes and highlights you make, so the work of organizing happens on our side, not yours.
- There is nothing to set up. No syntax, no folders, no plugins, no vault. Sign up, install the extension, keep reading. The first useful moment is minutes away, not an afternoon.
- It lives where reading happens. In the browser, on the page, not in a separate app you have to remember to open.
- It works for everyone. Our head of engineering, Ralph, builds histre with a screen reader. Every screen works without a mouse. If something ever breaks for a screen reader, it breaks for the person leading engineering, and it gets fixed first.
- It costs what a coffee costs. Five dollars a month, or free with limits, because the people this is for do not have a software budget.
- It stays out of the way. Fewer concepts, not more features. If something adds power but adds load, it has to earn its place.
Why it is hosted
The tinkerer's answer to privacy is to self-host. That is a fine answer for the tinkerer. For everyone else it is no answer at all: a server to rent, updates to apply, backups to remember, and one bad day away from losing everything.
So histre is a service we run, and that means asking you to trust us. I take that seriously, and I would rather earn it than ask for it:
- The privacy policy is one page, in plain language, and it names every company that touches your data. We do not sell data, we do not show ads, and nothing goes to an AI model unless you ask it to.
- Your data stays yours. Export everything with one click, or pull it through the API. Delete any of it, or all of it, and it is gone.
- The boring parts are done right. Encrypted connections, encrypted backups, a small team with access, and a company that makes money the old way: you pay us for a product you find useful.
You give up running a server. You get the same benefits the self-hosters wanted, without the second job.
Who this is not for
If you love customizing your workspace, if plain text and self-hosting are part of the point for you, there are excellent tools for that, and I built one of them: Hyperclast is for the people who want the whole stack in their hands. histre is for the people who want the stack to disappear.
About me
I'm Kirubakaran, and I have been building software for twenty-five years. Somewhere along the way I noticed that every tool I loved assumed the people using it were like me, and that most people are not. histre is my attempt to build the tool for the rest of us: quiet, cheap, accessible, and honest about what it does with your data.