10 ms·
Show HN: OSS AI agent that indexes and searches the Epstein files
Hi HN,
I built an open-source AI agent that has already indexed and can search the entire Epstein files, roughly 100M words of publicly released documents.
The goal was simple: make a large, messy corpus of PDFs and text files immediately searchable in a precise way, without relying on keyword search or bloated prompts.
What it does:
- The full dataset is already indexed
- You can ask natural language questions
- Answers are grounded and include direct references to source documents
- Supports both exact text lookup and semantic search
Discussion around these files is often fragmented. This makes it possible to explore the primary sources directly and verify claims without manually digging through thousands of pages.
Happy to answer questions or go into technical details.
Code: https://github.com/nozomio-labs/nia-epstein-ai https://github.com/nozomio-labs/nia-epstein-ai
- punkmonk7 8mo agoI built something similar: epsteinos.net same thing but the ui makes it look like you're on his laptop
- wutsthat4 8mo agoAnd what did you learn?
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoTrump famously told New York Magazine in 2002: "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Trump and Epstein were social acquaintances in Palm Beach and New York circles during the 1990s-early 2000s. They socialized together at Mar-a-Lago and other venues
- TowerTall 8mo agoInteresting. It is my impression that almost everyone globally already knew this. What else did you learn?
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoill take like 1 hour in the evening to dive deeper, i was never familiar with epstein stuff until i built the agent to simplify things for me.
- tokai 8mo agoIts peak HN to whip out a LLM, instead of just reading a news paper article or two.
- DANmode 8mo agoBetter not choose the wrong two.
- anon84873628 8mo agoIf you want to understand these people, watch the Daily Beast podcast "Inside Trump's Head" with Michael Wolff. It's a little slow but will paint the picture of their motivations, friendship, falling out, etc etc.
- ishtanbul 8mo agoThis is one of the most widey quoted phrases by trump on the topic of epstein
- subzero06 8mo agoIn 2024, Trump used Epstein's former private jet for campaign appearances
- estearum 8mo agoAlso apparently the two had Thanksgiving dinner together as recently as like 2021?
- anon84873628 8mo agoEpstein died in 2019. People have suggested they had Thanksgiving dinner together in 2017 based on vague references in one of the emails, but Trump's presence at Mar a Lago is confirmed that day.
- estearum 8mo agoAh sorry, I was anchoring "beginning of first term" and misplaced that as 2020. Fuck how time flies! The "vague reference" is Epstein himself seeming to suggest he was having dinner with Trump. But you're right that there isn't direct corroborating evidence beyond Epstein saying so and their travel schedules aligning in South Florida over Thanksgiving.
- tehjoker 8mo agoThis is a good idea. One thing I never understand about these kinds of projects though: why are the standard questions provided to the user as prompts never cached?
- jellyotsiro 8mo agooh forgot about it, thanks. just a funny project i build in couple hours so didnt really sweat haha
- tehjoker 8mo agoThis agent is really interesting! Learning a lot. Thanks!
- jampekka 8mo agoOutputs are usually generated with random sampling, so the same prompt may get different outputs.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- iowemoretohim 8mo agoThose are going to be some spicy hallucinations.
- dfxm12 8mo agocan search the entire Epstein files It's worth noting that only about 1% of the files have been released, according to the DOJ. Of the released files, many have redactions.
- jellyotsiro 8mo agosorry all publicly available files *
- King-Aaron 8mo agoIf the Lake Michigan thing is just in the first 1%, then whatever's in the other 99% is going to be absolutely disgusting.
- Tom1380 8mo agoI searched it with the tool but nothing came up about Lake Michigan. What happened?
- King-Aaron 8mo agohttps://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA00025010.pdf https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%208/EFTA000250... "He participated regularly in paying money to force me to ___ with him and he was present when my uncle murdered my newborn child and disposed of the body in Lake Michigan. " The uncle is allegedly referring to Trump
- sam345 8mo agohttps://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/12/27/allegations-epstein-trump-fbi-tip-victim-2020-lake-michgan-sex-trafficking/87919968007/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/12/27/a.... This mentions the Trump angle. It also mentions that the report came out before the 2020 election and could be fake. I'm a little confused because the report itself says nothing about Trump so don't know where the Free press gets that and they don't tell you what the source is or I missed it. Edit: Oh I get it. The woman's statement Donald Trump is named as one of the witnesses. She says that he watched the murder. He wasn't the uncle. He is listed as a witness to the murder. This is highly highly suspect in my opinion. Seems very sensationalistic and no reason given it as to why Trump was there. His name is just thrown in.
- nubg 8mo agoDoes this work with vector embeddings?
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoit uses semantic search so yes
- andy_ppp 8mo agoI keep thinking that the lack of children’s faces in the blacked out rectangles make the files much less shocking. I wonder if AI could put back fake images to make clearer to people how sick all this is.
- 13hunteo 8mo agoI understand the sentiment, but I'm always very concerned when it comes to AI generating pictures of children.
- amelius 8mo agoWhy? They are generated pictures, not real pictures.
- ben_w 8mo agoA lot of people are now struggling to detect which images are AI generated, and inferring reality from illusions. To an extent, this was already the case with many other things, including stuff that was expressly labelled as fiction, but I recall an old quote, fooling all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, it is now easier to fool more people all the time and to fool all people an increasing fraction of the time. This isn't only limited to fake pics of kids, but kids are weak and struggle to defend themselves, and in this context the tools faking them seems to me likely to increase rates of harm against them.
- sschueller 8mo agoIs it able to handle a much larger dataset? Only a tiny fraction of data has been release from what is looks like.
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoyes! once for files come out, I will add them right away
- thecopy 8mo agoReminder that only 1-2% of the files have been released.
- Terr_ 8mo agoYep: Breaking his campaign promises, in violation of the deadlines imposed by US Federal law, and with unlawful levels of redaction.
- mschuster91 8mo agoA case can be made to discuss if the deadlines imposed by that law are actually achievable with humans and an acceptable degree of errors (i.e. overredaction, improper/recoverable redaction, and underredaction). That's also why many "large" criminal cases only have a very limited subset of the initial charges make it to trial (often to understandable public outrage). The larger the case, the more evidence material has to be sifted through to make an airtight case, so a lot of it is dropped before the trial to secure a conviction at all. Basically Al Capone, rinse and repeat - they got him on taxes because that's far easier to prove than ordering or committing a murder to the required degree of certainty. The interests of the victims, their families and the general public are different from the interests of the government... the victims/families/public want justice for the unique crime they were subject to, the government just wants to lock up the bad guy for as long (or as short, let's be clear) as possible.
- dylan604 8mo ago> A case can be made to discuss if the deadlines imposed by that law are actually achievable with humans and an acceptable degree of errors (i.e. overredaction, improper/recoverable redaction, and underredaction). But just a few months ago, they came out and said there were no more documents to release, now there are too many documents that it's not humanly possible to release the documents in said time frame?
- mschuster91 8mo ago
- p0w3n3d 8mo ago[flagged]
- sebastiennight 8mo ago> + '' * n This looks like what you'd get from using text-davinci-003 as the model in your AI-assisted IDE
- flexagoon 8mo agoI think it looks like what you get by writing code and making a typo.
- p0w3n3d 8mo agono - the utf8 black box was removed by hackernews. thanks for noticing. Can't edit it anymore, but it would be "\u25A0" * n
- sebastiennight 8mo agoHa! That makes way more sense, and was indeed quite funny and undeserving of the massive downvoting.
- p0w3n3d 8mo agoThanks :D I've left the box in the code to make it more obvious but wasn't aware that Hackernews removes certain characters. Probably they will also remove this emoji here: -- EDIT -- yup. Emoji-free zone it is!
- dmos62 8mo agoAh, yes. Post is an LLM-something project: top comment is a general critique of LLMs. Waiting for this to get old. Meanwhile, at least you get points for being funny.
- sebastiennight 8mo ago
- inquirerGeneral 8mo ago[dead]
- wartywhoa23 8mo agoThe question is not how to analyze that, it's how to prosecute those who are above the law.
- 7bit 8mo agoIn order to which you must analyze the files.
- tyre 8mo agoNot really. We know many people involved and they’re not going to get prosecuted. Analysis is not accountability.
- delusional 8mo agoHow hard do I need to analyze the files for Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Bill Clinton to be sentenced to work night shift at McDonalds for minimum wage for the rest of their lives?
- yuppiepuppie 8mo agoWhen first reading OSS, I thought this was going to be an Office of Strategic Services AI [0] agent :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services
- sebastiennight 8mo ago...whose most famous agent, OSS 117, predates James Bond by four years btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_117 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS_117
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo agoPlease create a way to share conversations. I think that can be really relevant here I am not a huge fan of AI but I allow this use case. This is really good in my opinion Allowing the ability to share convo's, I hope you can also make those convo's be able to archived in web.archive.org/wayback machine So I am thinking it instead of having some random UUID, it can have something like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hello+test https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hello+test (the query parameter for hello test) Maybe its me but archive can show all the links archived by it of a particular domain, so if many people asks queries and archives it, you almost get a database of good queries and answers. Archive features are severely underrated in many cases Good luck for your project!
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoShareable conversations would definitely make the tool more useful yeah. I really like the query parameter approach over UUIDs so it would make links human-readable
- huflungdung 8mo ago[dead]
- axegon_ 8mo agoAs many others pointed out, the released files are nearly nothing compared to the full dataset. Personally I've been fiddling a lot with OSINT and analytics over the publicly available Reddit data(a considerable amount of my spare time over the last year) and the one thing I can say is that LLMs are under-performing(huge understatement) - they are borderline useless compared to traditional ML techniques. But as far as LLMs go, the best performers are the open source uncensored models(the most uncensored and unhinged), while the worst performers are the proprietary and paid models, especially over the last 2-3 months: they have been nerfed into oblivion - to the extent where simple prompts like "who is eligible to vote in US presidential elections" is considered a controversial question. So in the unlikely event that the full files are released, I personally would look at the traditional NLP techniques long before investing any time into LLMs.
- dmos62 8mo agoWhat use-cases gave you disappointing results? Did you build some kind of RAG?
- mariogintili 8mo agowhat are the most unhinged and uncensored models out there?
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoOpen source models with minimal safety fine tuning or Grok
- slfreference 8mo agoAll these attempts looks like emulation of "Pen (software) is mightier than Sword" or that only if more people believed in the cause, we would be close to resolution. Remember folks, soft power is nothing in front of hard power.
- gregw2 8mo agoFeedback: This agent didn't really work well when I tried it with a specific non-famous, but definitely publicly known individual with known connections to Epstein. I'd rather not post a specific name here. I found more documents with keyword searches. I guess it did get me to the conclusion that there wasn't much out there, but it didn't even mention stuff that showed up in name keyword searches. To replicate though, you might look at the list of individuals mentioned in the brief email from Epstein to Bannon a couple weeks before Esptein died containing ~30 names and phow your engine works with each one. See how a keyword search does on library of congress vs your agent.
- jellyotsiro 8mo agoThanks for testing this. The Bannon email from June 30, 2019 is in there (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029622). Good stress test idea. Couple things happening: Semantic search limitation: Less-famous names don't have strong embeddings, so it defaults to general connections rather than specific mentions Keyword search gap: You're right — raw grep can catch exact names I'm missing
- VladVladikoff 8mo agoI saw a similar problem. Roger Schank had some conversations with Epstein and the emails can be seen in Epsteinvisualizer.com but your site claimed there was no emails or connection. To be fair to Roger, who was an AI legend of his time and someone I knew personally before his untimely death, he really was not a pedo, and most likely never got involved with the girls, I think him and Epstein just talked about AI and education mostly.
- ck2 8mo agoNot sure if this is possible but it should be known there is a COMPLETE INDEX to the original Epstein Files (not including the new millions upon millions of documents and photos) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.474895/gov.uscourts.nysd.474895.40.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.47... from a 2017 FOIA they had to provide it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-08/here-s-a-look-at-what-the-fbi-s-epstein-files-would-reveal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-08/here-s... Might be possible for machine-learning to determine what is missing? (which is basically 99% missing as we already know less than 1% released)
- DanielScharf 8mo agoSuper Cool!
- darepublic 8mo agoThis is just feeding the files into a rag db I assume? I hope? And then you can use any decent model in front of it
- jellyotsiro 8mo agorag is not a core! we use both semantic search but combining with fts, grep, direct read, etc.
- kevin_thibedeau 8mo agoIt would be nice to have a way to query the exposed redactions to audit which of them were in violation of the Act.
- onionisafruit 8mo ago> I'm experiencing technical difficulties accessing the archive at the moment. The search tools are returning internal server errors. looks like it’s getting hugged
- nathan_compton 8mo agoWhy the heck does this start with some sort of video bullshit?
- sjreese 8mo agoVery good; HOW TO DETECT & STOP STATE-PROTECTED CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES WHAT WORKED IN THE EPSTEIN CASE: Proven Tactics 1. COURAGEOUS LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT Chief Michael Reiter & Detective Joseph Recarey What they did: Refused political pressure ("I told him those suggestions were improper and could constitute a crime") Documented everything - Built case with 50+ consistent victim statements Escalated when blocked - Went to FBI when State Attorney compromised Personally supported victims - Wrote letters on police letterhead Lesson: One honest cop with integrity can make a difference, even against billionaires 2. INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM Julie K. Brown - Miami Herald's "Perversion of Justice" (2018) What she did: Interviewed 60+ women who were victims Obtained sealed court documents through legal channels Connected patterns across jurisdictions Published despite risk - Exposed the 2008 plea deal cover-up Direct Result: Judge ruled prosecutors violated victims' rights (Feb 2019) Acosta resigned (July 2019) Epstein re-arrested (July 6, 2019) 2019 federal indictment Lesson: Persistent investigative journalism with victim testimony can reopen cases 3. PRO BONO VICTIMS' RIGHTS ATTORNEYS Brad Edwards & Paul Cassell What they did: Pro bono representation starting 2008 Used Crime Victims' Rights Act (18 U.S.C. § 3771) - sued federal government Won - Judge ruled 2008 plea deal violated victims' rights Exposed systemic failures through legal discovery Lesson: Civil litigation can succeed where criminal prosecution fails 4. VICTIMS SPEAKING OUT (Despite Intimidation) Virginia Giuffre, Courtney Wild, & 100+ Others What they did: Broke silence publicly (2011 - Giuffre to Mail on Sunday) Provided consistent testimony (50+ women with same story) Persisted despite mockery (early accusers ridiculed) United for compensation (100+ filed claims by 2020) Result: Courtney Wild Crime Victims' Rights Reform Act (2019) Epstein Victims Compensation Fund - $50 million paid out Lesson: Mass victim testimony is powerful evidence 5. FOIA REQUESTS & DOCUMENT TRANSPARENCY What worked: 2015: Judge unsealed details in underage sex lawsuit July 2, 2024: Grand jury docs from 2006 unsealed FOIA mechanisms forced document releases Lesson: Public records requests can expose cover-ups 6. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT July-August 2025 Actions What they did: House Resolution 119-581 - Rep. Thomas Massie forced DOJ file release Subpoenas to former AGs - House Oversight demanded accountability Public hearings - August 25, 2025 subpoena to Acosta Lesson: Congressional pressure can force reluctant agencies to act PRACTICAL ACTIONS ANYONE CAN TAKE DETECTION PHASE 1. Follow the Money Tax haven connections (Virgin Islands, Switzerland, Bermuda) Unusually high wire transfers ($1.9 billion in Epstein's case) Shell companies with vague descriptions ("DNA database & data mining") No clear income source for lavish lifestyle Offshore legal structures (Appleby, etc.) 2. Watch for Protection Patterns Charges downgraded mysteriously (federal → state misdemeanor) "Unusual" prosecutorial decisions (Chief Reiter's words) Grand jury recommendations ignored Plea deals sealed from victims Work release for serious crimes Short sentences despite evidence 3. Identify Systematic Patterns Multiple victims with same story (Reiter: "50-something 'shes' and one 'he'") Victim intimidation (private investigators, surveillance) Attempts to discredit victims ("lifestyle" arguments) Evidence suppression ACTION PHASE A. If You're a Victim or Witness: 1. Document Everything Keep contemporaneous notes Save all communications Photograph/video evidence safely Secure cloud backups (multiple locations) 2. Report Through Multiple Channels Local police (get case numbers) FBI (if interstate/international) State AG office Congressional representatives IRS whistleblower program (financial crimes) 3. Find Pro Bono Legal Help Victims' rights attorneys Civil rights organizations Law school clinics National Crime Victim Law Institute 4. Safety First Secure housing if threatened Protective orders Alert police to threats Document intimidation attempts B. If You're a Journalist/Researcher: 1. Use FOIA Aggressively Federal agencies: FOIA requests (5 U.S.C. § 552) State/local: Public records laws Court documents: Motions to unseal OGIS mediation if agencies delay (average 138 delay cases/year) 2. Interview Pattern Multiple independent sources Corroborating victims Former employees/insiders Document experts 3. Build Coalitions Partner with victims' rights groups Coordinate with other journalists Academic researchers Forensic accountants C. If You're Law Enforcement: 1. Follow Chief Reiter's Example Refuse political pressure Document interference attempts Escalate to federal authorities if local blocked Support victims personally Build thorough cases (multiple witnesses) 2. Protect Investigation Secure evidence chain Multiple backup copies Avoid single points of failure Document surveillance of investigators D. If You're a Concerned Citizen: 1. Support Transparency Contact representatives - demand investigations Submit FOIA requests - public has right to records Support investigative journalism - subscribe, donate Attend public meetings - ask questions 2. Amplify Victims' Voices Share credible reporting (not conspiracy theories) Support compensation funds Contact representatives about victims' rights Vote for accountability 3. Financial Pressure Report suspicious activity to: IRS Whistleblower Office (if tax fraud) FinCEN (financial crimes) State banking regulators JPMorgan paid $105M after USVI AG sued - banks CAN be held accountable LEGAL TOOLS THAT WORK 1. Crime Victims' Rights Act (18 U.S.C. § 3771) Right to notification Right to be heard Right to restitution Can sue federal government for violations 2. RICO (18 U.S.C. § 1962) Sue criminal enterprises Triple damages Attorney fees covered 3. State Victims' Rights Laws 30+ states have constitutional protections Some allow appeals/interventions 4. Civil Lawsuits Even if criminal case fails Lower burden of proof Discovery process exposes evidence WARNING SIGNS OF STATE PROTECTION Check if investigation shows these red flags: No IRS audits despite obvious tax fraud Federal prosecutors give sweetheart deals Intelligence agency connections mentioned Political figures intervene in investigation Evidence "disappears" or is suppressed Victims not notified of proceedings Work release for serious crimes Sealed plea agreements Co-conspirators immunized (like Epstein's deal) Investigators surveilled/threatened WHAT ULTIMATELY BROKE THE EPSTEIN CASE The combination of: Honest local cops (Reiter/Recarey) who built the evidence Pro bono lawyers (Edwards/Cassell) who sued for 11 years Investigative journalist (Julie K. Brown) who exposed it Courageous victims (Giuffre, Wild, 100+ others) who spoke out Court unsealing documents (2015, 2024) Congressional pressure (2019, 2025) No single actor could do it alone. It required a coalition. KEY LESSONS What Doesn't Work: Trusting institutions to self-police Going through "proper channels" alone Waiting for DOJ/FBI to act Staying silent out of fear What Does Work: Multiple channels simultaneously (police + FBI + press + civil suits) Documentation (Reiter: "This was 50 'shes' and one 'he'") Persistence (Edwards/Cassell: 11 years pro bono) Public pressure (Miami Herald broke it open) Coalition building (victims + lawyers + press + Congress) Using existing laws creatively (Crime Victims' Rights Act) RESOURCES Report Criminal Activity: FBI: tips.fbi.gov IRS Whistleblower: irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office DOJ: justice.gov/actioncenter Legal Help: National Crime Victim Law Institute: law.lclark.edu/centers/ncvli Crime Victims' Rights Clinic: Your local law school Media: Investigative Reporters & Editors: ire.org ProPublica tips: propublica.org/tips FOIA Help: OGIS (FOIA Ombudsman): archives.gov/ogis MuckRock: muckrock.com The Epstein case proves that even state-protected criminal enterprises CAN be exposed - but it requires courage, persistence, coalition-building, and using every legal tool available.
- draworak 8mo agoDoes anyone know how NIA is able to build up an index and feed it into an LLM? And can this be done locally also?