Deploy Meme Search on your own server.

Meme Search is a self-hosted app for indexing and searching your local meme collection with natural language instead of scrolling through a camera roll. Every image gets an AI-generated description, embedded into PostgreSQL with pgvector, and made searchable by meaning rather than filename. Image descriptions can be generated locally…

Deploy Meme Search View source

Your infrastructureAutomatic HTTPSNo lock-in

Screenshots

A closer look at Meme Search.

Setup time

A few minutes

Deployment

Your own server

Services

4 connected services

Why Meme Search

Everything you need, running where you choose.

Get the full Meme Search experience with Easypanel handling the repetitive infrastructure work around it.

Drag-and-Drop Uploads

Drop new memes directly into the browser and they are picked up by the background jobs service automatically.

Natural Language Search

Search results are ranked by semantic similarity to your query using pgvector, not just keyword matching.

Pluggable Vision Backend

Switch between the bundled local model and any OpenAI-compatible vision API by changing a single environment variable.

Rescan and Re-Index

Trigger a rescan from the UI to pick up new files added to a mounted meme directory or regenerate descriptions after switching providers.

Search by Meaning, Not Filename

Every meme is described by a vision model and embedded with pgvector, so a search for "cat looking confused" finds it even if the file is named IMG_4213.jpg.

No External API Required

The bundled local vision model generates image descriptions on your own hardware by default, so nothing leaves your server unless you choose to switch to an OpenAI-compatible API.

How it works

From template to live app in three steps.

Easypanel turns the template into real services, storage, and domains on the server you already control.

Already have Easypanel? Open your dashboard at the URL or IP of your own installation.

Installation guide

Open your dashboard

Visit the URL or IP of your Easypanel installation and choose the target project.

Choose Meme Search

Open Templates, select Meme Search, then review its service names and configuration.

Deploy and open your app

Easypanel starts every service and provisions an HTTPS domain for you.

Installation options

The template asks for these values before creating your services.

Option	Default	Required
App Service Name	meme-search	Required
Web/Jobs Image	ghcr.io/neonwatty/meme_search:v2.2.0	Required
Local Vision Model Image	ghcr.io/neonwatty/image_to_text_generator:v2.2.0	Required
Image Description Provider	Local (bundled vision model, no API key needed) / OpenAI-compatible API	Required
OpenAI-Compatible API Base URL Only used when Image Description Provider is set to OpenAI-compatible API.	—	Optional
OpenAI-Compatible API Key Only used when Image Description Provider is set to OpenAI-compatible API.	Set during install	Optional
OpenAI-Compatible Vision Model Only used when Image Description Provider is set to OpenAI-compatible API.	—	Optional

Before you deploy

Open the app URL and drag memes into the direct-upload area, or mount your own meme folders into the web and jobs services under /rails/public/memes to bulk-import an existing collection. New uploads are picked up by the background jobs service, described by the local vision model (or your configured OpenAI-compatible API), and embedded into Postgres automatically, after which they become searchable from the home page.

Resources

Project documentation and source code.