We’ve lost hours of our lives in the spotlight and we’ve got nothing back Know File exists. naming a file Untitled (4).docx Or Assignment_1(4).pdf Guarantees you’ll never see it again. Naming the PDF after the client doesn’t help when you’ve forgotten the client name.
That’s why we created Stella. You describe the file the same way you would describe it to a coworker. “The pitch deck with the blue chart,” “My tax return from last year,” “That contract Sarah sent in February,” And Stella finds it. A search bar across all your local folders.
oh, and this is Free.
Some things we care about:
– 100% local. Your files never leave your device. No cloud, no telemetry on file contents, no account required. The embedding model (291MB, scaled) runs on your machine.
– Fast. Filename matching returns in ~5ms; Semantic results come in under 200ms.
– Honest about quality. We benchmarked against Spotlight on 433 real queries – Stella was ~5x more accurate (0.83 vs 0.16 MRR@10), and Spotlight did not surface a single file that Stella missed. We would prefer to show numbers instead of adjectives.
What will happen next: More file formats, a Windows build, and cloud storage integration (yes this includes Outlook, because Outlook search is incredibly bad).
We would love your feedback, especially questions where fails. This is where we learn the most.
– Stella Team
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