khoj

Khoj is a self-hostable “AI second brain” that provides chat and research-style Q&A over local and web/document sources using semantic search and LLMs. It supports multiple frontends (web, desktop/editor integrations) and can run agents and automations.

Evaluated Mar 29, 2026 (0d ago)
Homepage ↗ Repo ↗ Ai Ml ai-ml search rag self-hosted semantic-search agents productivity
⚙ Agent Friendliness
41
/ 100
Can an agent use this?
🔒 Security
52
/ 100
Is it safe for agents?
⚡ Reliability
42
/ 100
Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality
55
Documentation
60
Error Messages
0
Auth Simplicity
40
Rate Limits
20

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement
70
Auth Strength
45
Scope Granularity
40
Dep. Hygiene
55
Secret Handling
50

From provided materials: TLS enforcement and secret-handling practices are not documented. Dependency list includes several security- and parsing-related libraries (e.g., defusedxml), but also many heavy ML/web dependencies (transformers/torch) with a non-trivial attack surface. Auth and fine-grained scope details are not provided, so scores are conservative.

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA
30
Version Stability
60
Breaking Changes
50
Error Recovery
30
AF Security Reliability

Best When

You want a self-hosted assistant that can index many document formats and answer questions using retrieval plus an LLM, optionally using different LLM providers/models.

Avoid When

You need a clearly specified, documented public API contract (OpenAPI/SDK) or strict operational guarantees (SLA, idempotency/retry semantics) documented for programmatic use.

Use Cases

  • Private chat over your documents (PDFs, Markdown, Notion exports, etc.) via semantic search/RAG
  • Building custom agents with specific tools/knowledge personas
  • Automating research and delivering newsletters/notifications
  • Using local LLMs for offline/self-hosted assistant capabilities
  • Integrating the assistant into tools like Obsidian, Emacs, and mobile experiences

Not For

  • A fully managed SaaS-only solution if you require zero self-hosting
  • A strict “API-only” product with guaranteed stable external REST/SDK contracts (no API spec provided in supplied content)
  • High-compliance environments where you need clearly documented enterprise security controls from the provided materials

Interface

REST API
No
GraphQL
No
gRPC
No
MCP Server
Yes
SDK
No
Webhooks
No

Authentication

Methods: Self-hosted authentication/authorization (not described in provided materials) Cloud app likely uses user accounts; details not provided in supplied content API-key/OAuth mechanisms not explicitly documented in provided materials
OAuth: No Scopes: No

The provided materials confirm MCP is included as a dependency, but do not provide concrete auth mechanism details (e.g., OAuth flows, API keys, scopes). Assume authentication exists in the full product but cannot score it precisely from given content.

Pricing

Free tier: Yes
Requires CC: No

README mentions a cloud app and that there is a “Get started - free” claim in repo description; no concrete limits or billing details were provided in the supplied content.

Agent Metadata

Pagination
none
Idempotent
False
Retry Guidance
Not documented

Known Gotchas

  • Provided materials do not include MCP server details (tools, schemas, error codes, pagination), so agent integration may require manual exploration of the running server and its tool contracts.
  • RAG/chat systems can produce non-deterministic outputs; agents should not assume stable response schemas without explicit tool-level guarantees.

Alternatives

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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-29.

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