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What is scira?

zaidmukaddam/scira — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

★ 11,652TypeScriptAudience · generalComplexity · 3/5LicenseSetup · moderate

In one sentence

Scira is an open-source AI search tool that answers questions with cited sources, it searches the web, academic papers, GitHub, Reddit, and more, then returns a verified answer with clickable citations instead of just links.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Scira))
    What it does
      AI search with citations
      Multi-source research
      PDF Q and A
    Search modes
      Web and academic
      Reddit GitHub
      Financial crypto
    Tech stack
      Next.js TypeScript
      Vercel AI SDK
      Exa AI search
    Audience
      Researchers
      Founders
      General users
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Code map

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Self-host a private AI research assistant that searches the web and returns cited answers using your own API keys.

USE CASE 2

Upload a PDF and ask questions about its contents to get specific, sourced answers rather than generic summaries.

USE CASE 3

Run multi-source research across academic papers, Reddit, and GitHub simultaneously in one query.

USE CASE 4

Build a custom AI search product by forking the codebase and swapping in your preferred AI models and search backends.

What is it built with?

TypeScriptNext.jsTailwind CSSVercel AI SDKExa AIUpstash

How does it compare?

zaidmukaddam/sciragiscus/giscusaurelia/framework
Stars11,65211,66711,683
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultymoderateeasymoderate
Complexity3/52/53/5
Audiencegeneraldeveloperdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires API keys from multiple providers, an AI model provider, Exa AI for web search, and Upstash for rate limiting, before the app is functional.

AGPL-3.0, free to self-host and modify, but any modified version you distribute or run as a network service must also be open-source under AGPL.

So what is it?

Scira is an open-source, AI-powered search and research tool that takes a question, a PDF, or a URL and produces a cited answer. Instead of returning a list of links, it breaks your question into sub-tasks, searches the web (and other sources), cross-checks the evidence, and gives back a grounded response with clickable citations so you can verify every claim yourself. The project supports 17 search modes. You can search across the general web, academic papers, Reddit discussions, GitHub repositories, YouTube videos, stock markets, cryptocurrency data, and more. There is also a chat mode for talking directly to the AI without any search, and specialized modes for things like Spotify, prediction markets, and real-time posts on X. A handful of modes (Connectors, Memory, Voice, and XQL) are marked as Pro features. Scira includes about 28 built-in tools that the AI can call on your behalf. These cover web retrieval, financial data, weather, maps, flight tracking, movie and TV lookups, code execution in a sandboxed environment, document search over uploaded files, and personal memory storage. You can upload a PDF or spreadsheet and ask questions about its contents. The codebase is built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS on the front end, the Vercel AI SDK for connecting to AI models, Exa AI for web search and content retrieval, and Upstash for rate limiting. It supports a wide range of AI model providers, including xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, DeepSeek, and many others. Scira is AGPL-3.0 licensed, which means you can self-host it and bring your own API keys and models. A hosted version is available at scira.ai.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I want to self-host Scira, walk me through setting up the Next.js app with my own Anthropic and Exa API keys, including every required environment variable.
Prompt 2
How do I add a new search mode to Scira that queries Hacker News via Exa and returns the top 5 relevant discussions formatted for the AI?
Prompt 3
Help me configure Scira to use Claude Sonnet as the default model instead of the current default, and set up rate limiting with Upstash Redis.
Prompt 4
Write a Scira-compatible tool definition that calls a custom REST API and returns formatted results the AI can include in its cited answer.

Frequently asked questions

What is scira?

Scira is an open-source AI search tool that answers questions with cited sources, it searches the web, academic papers, GitHub, Reddit, and more, then returns a verified answer with clickable citations instead of just links.

What language is scira written in?

Mainly TypeScript. The stack also includes TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS.

What license does scira use?

AGPL-3.0, free to self-host and modify, but any modified version you distribute or run as a network service must also be open-source under AGPL.

How hard is scira to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is scira for?

Mainly general.

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