4.4BSD

Robert

Robert is a statically linked, 3MB binary that is designed to teach and troubleshoot FreeBSD. He searches man pages, the FreeBSD handbooks, the ports tree, and the package database, and grounds every answer in official FreeBSD documentation.

Robert is also available through a publically accessible sshd 🙂
So you can try Robert without installing anything, and it is free to use within reason:

$ ssh robert@4.4bsd.dev

Handbook

Full-text search across the FreeBSD handbooks via an HTTP+JSON interface, intended for scripts, terminals, AI agents, and any other software that speaks HTTP.

##
# Search the user's handbook
fetch -qo - 'https://4.4bsd.dev/handbook/u/search?q=pkg'

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# Search the developer's handbook
fetch -qo - 'https://4.4bsd.dev/handbook/d/search?q=compiler'

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# Search the porter's handbook
fetch -qo - 'https://4.4bsd.dev/handbook/p/search?q=Makefile'

Indexed books:

• FreeBSD User's Handbook
• FreeBSD Developer's Handbook
• FreeBSD Porter's Handbook

Open Source

All 4.4BSD services are 100% open source.

The handbook search can be self-hosted and includes a make install target alongside an rc.d script. Robert is also open source and can be built from source.