pipseek

Search all of PyPI from your terminal, by name and description, and check your own environment for outdated and vulnerable packages. The pip search that PyPI switched off, rebuilt with a full-text index, an interactive TUI and no API keys.

pip search stopped working years ago, and scraping pypi.org/search doesn't work either, because that page now sits behind a browser challenge. pipseek keeps its own full-text index of all ~930,000 projects on PyPI, searches it locally in about 100 ms, and pulls live details for the results you're looking at. It uses only public APIs: no scraping, no accounts, no keys.

pipx install pipseek
pipseek "web framework"

Contents

• See it in action
• Features
• Install
• Usage
  • Interactive mode
  • Plain, JSON and info modes
  • Check your environment
  • Options
• How it works
• Where the data comes from
• Search tips
• FAQ
• Development
• Credits
• License

See it in action

Searches descriptions, not just names	Sort by downloads, see what's installed
Security score at a glance	"Did you mean?" for typos

Features

• Full-text search over every project's name, summary and keywords. pipseek "progress bar" finds tqdm, pipseek "web framework" finds Django, Flask and Tornado, and pipseek requests still puts requests first.
• Ranked the way you'd expect: exact and prefix name matches, BM25 relevance over descriptions, and real 30-day download counts, so popular packages beat empty placeholders.
• Interactive TUI built on [Textual]: a search box, a results list and a detail pane that follows your cursor.
• Rich details: version, release age (green, yellow or red by freshness), downloads, stars and forks, open issues, the OpenSSF Scorecard security score, author, license, Python requirement, links, extras and dependencies.
• Known vulnerabilities from OSV.dev, for the latest version and for the version you have installed, with severity, CVE and the version that fixes it.
• pipseek --outdated checks your whole environment: what's out of date, what's vulnerable, and the upgrade command to fix it. --strict makes it fail CI when something installed is vulnerable.
• Knows your environment: marks packages already installed in your active virtualenv or conda env (otherwise the Python on your PATH) and flags available updates.
• One-key actions: copy the install command, open PyPI or the repo in your browser, or install and upgrade without leaving the TUI.
• "Did you mean?" suggestions for typos, drawn from popular packages first.
• Script-friendly: --plain prints a table, --json gives structured output for jq, and piped output switches to plain mode on its own.
• No API keys, no accounts: everything comes from public, keyless APIs.
• Fast, and works offline: the index lives in a local SQLite full-text database. After the first run, searches don't need the network. Details are cached for an hour, and when PyPI can't be reached pipseek shows the name and summary from the local index instead.

Install

pipx or uv keep pipseek in its own isolated environment, which is the cleanest way:

pipx install pipseek
# or
uv tool install pipseek

Plain pip works too:

pip install pipseek

To run the latest code from GitHub instead of the PyPI release, use pipx install git+https://github.com/ohmybahgosh/pipseek.

Upgrade later with pipx upgrade pipseek or uv tool upgrade pipseek.

The first run downloads the search index (about 35 MB) and builds a local database from it, which takes about 10 seconds. After that it refreshes on its own once a week, or whenever you pass --refresh.

Usage

Interactive mode

pipseek                   # open the TUI with an empty search box
pipseek fastapi           # open the TUI and search right away
pipseek "pdf parser"      # multi-word searches match descriptions too

The i key installs into the same environment pipseek checks for installed packages: your active virtualenv or conda env, otherwise the first python3 on your PATH (python on Windows). Use --python to pick a different one.

Plain, JSON and info modes

--info for one package	--json for scripts

pipseek "pdf parser" --plain -n 8          # a table instead of the TUI
pipseek http -s downloads -n 10            # top 10 matches by downloads
pipseek --info requests                    # the full detail card for one package
pipseek django --json | jq '.[] | {name, version, released, stars}'
pipseek yaml --plain --page 2              # the next page of results

Check your environment

pipseek --outdated checks every package in your environment against PyPI and OSV.dev, puts the vulnerable ones first, and ends with the upgrade command. It checks the same environment pipseek uses for installed badges: your active virtualenv or conda env, otherwise the Python on your PATH, or whatever you pass to --python.

pipseek --outdated                    # outdated or vulnerable packages, worst first
pipseek --outdated --all              # every installed package
pipseek --outdated --json             # for scripts and dashboards
pipseek --outdated --strict           # fail if anything installed is vulnerable (for CI)
pipseek --outdated --no-stats         # only what's outdated, without asking OSV.dev

With --strict, the exit code tells you what happened:

When a lookup fails, pipseek says which packages it couldn't check instead of calling them safe. In --json output, "vulnerabilities": null means unknown, and [] means none are known.

Search results show the same check. When the version you have installed has known vulnerabilities, the detail pane says so in red, lists them with the fix version, and the results list flags them:

In the TUI	With --info

Options

--all and --strict only work together with --outdated; pipseek stops with an error if you use them on their own.

relevance, downloads and name sort all matches. updated and stars need live data, so they sort the page you're on.

How it works

PyPI has no public full-text search API, so pipseek brings its own index:

1. A daily GitHub Action (index.yml) runs pipseek.build_index. The PyPI Simple API reports a change serial for every project, so the build only re-fetches projects that changed since yesterday, usually a few thousand. It publishes pypi-index.tsv.gz (name, summary and keywords for every project) on the index release.
2. On your machine, pipseek downloads that file once a week, checks it against its published SHA-256 checksum, and streams it into a SQLite FTS5 database, so memory use stays low. A download that's corrupt, oversized or mostly missing summaries is rejected, and the database you already have is kept.
3. Each search combines name matches, BM25 relevance over summaries and keywords, and 30-day download counts, then fetches live details for just the page you're viewing.
4. If the release can't be reached, pipseek falls back to every project name from PyPI plus summaries for the 15,000 most popular projects, which ship inside the package, and tries for the full index again the next day.

Where the data comes from

pipseek identifies itself to these services as pipseek/<version> with a link to this repo. The index workflow uses only the token GitHub gives every Action run, so there are no secrets to set up.

Search tips

• Describe what you want: pipseek "async http client", pipseek "markdown to pdf", pipseek "json schema validation".
• Or type the name: an exact name always comes first, and close names follow (requests, requests-oauthlib, requests-toolbelt).
• Sort by downloads (s in the TUI, -s downloads on the command line) when you want the safe, popular choice.
• Run pipseek --outdated in each project now and then, or with --strict in CI, to catch vulnerable dependencies early.
• Check the Security row before adopting something new. It's the project's OpenSSF Scorecard: green is 7 or higher, yellow is 4 to 7, red is under 4.

FAQ

Why not just use pypi.org/search? You can in a browser, but it can't be scripted any more: it sits behind a JavaScript challenge meant to stop bots. pipseek doesn't try to get around that. It uses PyPI's official APIs instead, which are made for tools.

How fresh are the results? The index is rebuilt every day, and pipseek downloads it weekly. Versions, release dates and stats for the results you look at are always live (cached for an hour).

How much disk space does it use? About 175 MB for the search database, in ~/.cache/pipseek on Linux, ~/Library/Caches/pipseek on macOS, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\pipseek on Windows. pipseek --clear-cache removes it, along with every other cached file.

Does it work offline? Yes, once the index is built. Searching is local. For details, pipseek uses anything it has cached, even if it's old, and otherwise shows the name and summary from the local index with a note that PyPI couldn't be reached. --info works the same way.

Why is a package marked "installed" when I installed it somewhere else? pipseek checks one environment: your active virtualenv or conda env, otherwise the first python3 on your PATH (python on Windows, skipping the Microsoft Store placeholder). Pass --python /path/to/python to check a different one.

Is --outdated a replacement for pip-audit? For a quick look, often yes: it uses the same OSV data and adds what's outdated. pip-audit goes further for CI pipelines (requirements files, SBOMs, auto-fixing), so use it when you need those.

Can I build the index myself? Yes: python -m pipseek.build_index --out pypi-index.tsv.gz fetches every project from PyPI's JSON API. A full first build takes many hours, so the builder stops after a time budget (--time-budget, 5 hours by default) and picks up where it left off when you run it again with --previous pypi-index.tsv.gz. Expect several runs. python -m pipseek.build_index --check pypi-index.tsv.gz tells you when it's complete enough to use. Then point pipseek at it with PIPSEEK_INDEX_URL=/path/to/pypi-index.tsv.gz.

Development

git clone https://github.com/ohmybahgosh/pipseek
cd pipseek
pip install -e ".[dev]"
ruff check src tests
pytest

The code lives in src/pipseek: index.py (local search index and ranking), build_index.py (the index builder), pypi.py (PyPI and deps.dev clients), vulns.py (OSV.dev), outdated.py, env.py (your Python environment), cache.py, search.py, tui.py, render.py and cli.py. Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Credits

• Textual and Rich by Will McGugan and Textualize, for the TUI and terminal output.
• top-pypi-packages by Hugo van Kemenade, for download counts.
• deps.dev by Google, for repository stats and OpenSSF Scorecard results.
• The Python Packaging Authority and the PyPI team, for the Simple and JSON APIs.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. Made by OhMyBahGosh.