Show HN: Mole – Deep research agent for your terminal
100 points - last Friday at 6:52 PM
Doing research with agents is fun until they blow way past budget, jumble the sources, and don't even give you the best possible answer, just sound confident.
And if you want to run some research task on local data - you have no idea where your data ends up after the prompt consumes it.
So I built this tool: a deep-research agent with an enforced budget, verified quotes, and a privacy boundary for local data.
1. Never spend more than you budgeted (measured overshoot is 0%).
2. Every claim carries a source
3. Data stays local (give a CSV, it'll analyze it without the data ever leaving your machine)
Works with most LLMs, including coding agents, subscriptions, local models, etc.
It's free and open source, would appreciate all feedback!
hgomersall
last Saturday at 9:26 AM
What's deep research compared to more normal research?
daybox
last Friday at 7:44 PM
> Never spend more than you budgeted
I assume that this is "$ spent on search + $ spent on LLM" < budget, but how do you handle the LLM spending more than you would expect on a request? Or is this handled by max_tokens and some form of pricing table? (and if so, how does caching play a role?)
waqasai123
last Saturday at 5:08 AM
[flagged]
lajosdeme
last Friday at 8:35 PM
[dead]
shken
last Saturday at 12:25 PM
Does your research able to take most relevant stuff? Let's say i search for flight tickets, is it able to really find the most cheat ones
basedpolymer
last Friday at 7:43 PM
https://github.com/tw93/Mole I see a certain conflict of interest.
nusl
last Friday at 8:36 PM
How is this a conflict of interest instead of a plain naming conflict?
cmdrmac
last Friday at 7:48 PM
agreed! Name change is needed.
lfx
last Friday at 8:26 PM
DataMole?
ResearchRat?
DRR? (Deep Research Rat)?
kermatt
last Saturday at 4:34 PM
DeepMole
themadturk
last Saturday at 1:02 AM
Yeah, we need a name change here. Mole for Mac is a very nice system maintenance app, for both terminal and GUI.
hankbond
last Saturday at 12:53 AM
> Honest numbers
I'm glad your numbers are honest! For a moment I thought, hey, maybe this person's numbers are lying to me... but it turned out they were not so thank you!
conception
last Saturday at 5:35 AM
They are honest because they load bear the seam.
kedislav
yesterday at 2:21 AM
stop curl-ing into sh
recroad
last Friday at 9:21 PM
That is a LOT of code for a pretty basic feature.
zhixingheyi2023
last Saturday at 1:41 PM
[flagged]
gaya3bollineni
last Saturday at 11:17 PM
[dead]
kiops
last Saturday at 4:50 PM
[flagged]
shken
last Saturday at 12:23 PM
[dead]
reindeer2
last Saturday at 1:48 AM
[dead]
martinAndy
last Saturday at 6:40 PM
[dead]