File Types

Hister can index local files from configured directories and from explicit imports. Directory indexing is controlled by the indexer.directories configuration.

Local File Indexing

File type	Extensions	Indexed content	Title source
PDF	.pdf	Extracted plain text from all readable pages.	File path fallback
DOCX	.docx	Paragraph text.	DOCX metadata title when present, otherwise file path fallback
Markdown	.md, .markdown	Rendered Markdown text.	First H1 heading when present, otherwise file path fallback
Org mode	.org	Rendered Org text.	Org TITLE value when present, otherwise file path fallback
Plain text	Any file with valid UTF 8 text	Full file contents.	File path fallback

Files that do not match a specialized handler are treated as plain text. Binary files are skipped.

Directory Filters

The filetypes setting on a watched directory is an extension filter. Use names without the leading dot.

indexer:
  directories:
    - path: '~/Documents'
      filetypes: ['pdf', 'docx', 'md', 'txt']

If filetypes is omitted, Hister considers every file that passes the other directory rules. Specialized handlers run first, then valid UTF 8 text files are indexed as plain text.

Other directory rules still apply:

Rule	Behavior
include_hidden	Hidden files and directories are skipped unless this is enabled.
excludes	Matching paths are skipped.
patterns	When set, only matching files are considered.
indexer.max_file_size_mb	Files above the configured size limit are skipped.
sensitive_content_patterns	Matching files are rejected unless the indexing path explicitly allows sensitive content.

Import Formats

The hister import command accepts these file formats:

File type	Extensions	Behavior
Hister JSON export	.json	Imports documents previously written by hister export.
7z archive	.7z	Imports a compressed Hister JSON export.
Saved HTML page	.html, .htm	Extracts the original page URL from HTML metadata and indexes the page.

When importing a directory, Hister reads matching .json, .7z, .html, and .htm files directly inside that directory in filename order.