The answer engine you own.
A search engine and AI that run on your machine, over an index on your disk. One answer, every source shown.
Not code-signed yet — Windows will show a SmartScreen box. Click More info → Run anyway. Why, and how to check the file
macOS and Linux are not built yet
What MoatGoat is
The index is on your disk
Not a window onto someone else’s database. The pages MoatGoat searches are stored on your machine, and they keep working when the network doesn’t.
Nothing is bidding for the top
There is no ad slot, no sponsored row, no placement to sell. Ranking answers to one question only: is this the best source we have?
Your searches stay yours
No ads means no reason to build a profile of you. Queries are answered locally by default; what leaves your machine is your choice, and it’s shown to you.
Every answer shows its work
Sources are attached to the claims they support, and the reasoning trail unfolds. If it can’t ground a claim, it says so instead of inventing one.
This is the thing itself, not a screenshot of it.
The same surface you get after installing: your index first, live sources second, and the reason for every ranking available if you ask for it.
The engine runs on your machine, so that is where you can search it.
We could point this box at a server we run — and we will, once it can carry the traffic honestly. But a search box on a marketing page that quietly queries somebody else’s index is the arrangement we exist to replace, so it stays off until it is the real thing.
Download and search your ownFree · no account · Windows today
You hold the index. The herd curates it. Nobody sits in the middle.
Search stopped working when the people ranking it started getting paid by the people being ranked. MoatGoat removes the middleman rather than asking you to trust one.
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You get a real index, not a search box
MoatGoat keeps its own index on your disk and searches it locally — whole pages, not just links. It is a file you own: you set how much room it gets, and you can delete it.
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The herd curates what’s worth keeping
Join a herd and members share the index — which sources held up, which turned out to be slop. Never your queries, never your AI usage. Those never leave your machine.
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The answer is a draft you can argue with
Challenge a point and the answer re-sources itself and changes in place. When it’s right, you can publish it back to the herd.
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Your model, your call
A small model ships in the box and works with no key and no bill. Point it at a local model or a cloud one instead — the page tells you which one answered.
A small thrush with a cobalt back and a rust-orange breast — almost certainly an Eastern Bluebird.
The blue is unmistakable in good light; on a grey day the tell is the contrast — orange breast against a white belly. Females wear a muted version of the same pattern. See a photo comparison ›
Open country with scattered perches — pasture edges, orchards, roadside wires. Year-round across the eastern U.S.
An answer, as MoatGoat builds it — the format follows the question, and the sources come with it.
Free, private, no account.
Around 30 seconds to install. It asks a couple of questions on first launch, and you can search straight away. Nothing runs in the background that you haven’t turned on.
Windows first. The macOS and Linux builds are not finished, so they are not offered here rather than being offered and broken. They appear the day there is a file behind them.
This build is not code-signed yet, and your computer will say so. Windows shows a blue “Windows protected your PC” box from SmartScreen — click More info, then Run anyway.
That warning does not mean the file is unsafe. It means nobody has paid a certificate authority to vouch for the publisher yet — and we would rather tell you that than have you find out at the download. Signing certificates are bought by a registered company; the company is being formed, and the builds get signed as soon as it exists. Until then the honest way to check you got the file we built is the checksum below.
Check the file you downloaded (SHA-256)
Windows — PowerShell: Get-FileHash .\MoatGoat.exe -Algorithm SHA256
- MoatGoat.exe — 1.35 GB
c7f583af6db663f12833e594aca132b955788636eb11523eca0e078359f8a25b
Upper or lower case doesn’t matter — PowerShell prints capitals, shasum prints lower case.
macOS and Linux checksums appear here when those builds are published — they are built on their own machines, and we will not print a hash for a file we have not produced.
This is an early build, and it reads like one. The engine, the local index and the grounded answers all work — but the index is young, so it is thin in places a mature one would not be. You are installing something early, not a finished product. When it can’t ground an answer it will tell you so rather than guess, which is the part we are least willing to compromise.
On your desk, in your browser, or on a box in the cupboard.
Same engine underneath; the difference is where it lives and who else on your network gets to use it. Only the desktop app is finished — the other two say plainly where they’ve got to.
Desktop app
The whole thing: your index, your model, grounded answers, the herd. Windows today; macOS and Linux are not built yet. This is the one to start with.
Installs and runs today. Not code-signed yet, so your OS will warn you once.
Get the installer ›Browser extension
Keep the browser you have. Adds MoatGoat to the address bar, and — only if you switch it on — contributes the addresses of public pages you visit so the herd learns what is worth indexing. Never page content.
You can’t install this from a store yet. It works, but only loaded unpacked in developer mode. Nothing to click here unless you’re happy doing that.
Loading instructions ship with the extension — not published yetHome appliance
One always-on box — a Raspberry Pi will do — running the index for everything on your network, the way a Pi-hole does for ads. One copy of the index, shared by the whole house.
There is no image to flash yet. The node runs under Docker and serves an API on your LAN, but it has no web interface, so this is a build-it-yourself for now.
Setup notes go public with the first flashable imageThe quality layer, without the app.
The same thing that keeps slop out of a MoatGoat answer, as an endpoint. Send URLs, get back scored, deduplicated, flagged documents — with the reason codes for every call it made.
- We rank for youSend a query or your own retrieved URLs. Get clean originals back, and a list of what got collapsed and why.
- Or rank it yourselfPull the raw feature vectors — quality, flags, provenance, credibility, aggregate crowd-rank — and run your own ranker on your own infrastructure.
- Commons onlyEvery byte the API can expose comes from the public commons layer. No private queries, no per-user data, aggregate signals only.
# score any URL — no ranking, just the feature vector POST https://api.moatgoat.ai/v1/score { "urls": ["https://example.com/article"] } # → { "documents": [{ "url": "https://example.com/article", "signalConfidence": "warm", "quality": { "score": 0.82, "excluded": false }, "flags": { "seo_farm": false, "ai_slop": false }, "provenance": { "isOriginal": true }, "credibility": { "badge": "high" } }] }
Design spec: SUBSTRATE_API_SPEC.md — endpoints, auth, and the honest cold-start caveats. Published with the API.
A healthy internet needs someone who isn’t selling you.
That’s the whole idea. Install it, keep the index, and the answers stop being an auction.