Scolta AI Search

Scolta AI Search is built and maintained by Tag1 Consulting, one of the leading open-source consulting firms in the world.

Scolta AI Search is a scoring, ranking, and AI layer built on Pagefind. It builds a static inverted index at publish time and runs a browser-side WASM search engine — no search server required.

Key features:

• Static search index — no Elasticsearch, Solr, or external search service needed
• Works on managed hosting (WP Engine, Kinsta, Flywheel, Pantheon) where running a search server is not possible
• Optional AI query expansion and result summarization (Anthropic, OpenAI, or self-hosted)
• Configurable scoring: title match boost, content match boost, recency decay curves
• [scolta_search] shortcode to embed the search UI on any page
• WP-CLI commands for building and maintaining the search index
• Content change tracking with automatic background rebuilds via Action Scheduler
• Conservative memory profile (≤96 MB peak) safe for shared hosting

Privacy: The base search tier runs entirely in the visitor’s browser — no server-side involvement beyond serving static files. The AI tier is optional and only sends the search query text and selected result excerpts to your configured AI provider.

Requirements: WordPress 6.1+, PHP 8.1+. The Pagefind binary is optional — the PHP indexer works without it.

External Services

This plugin connects to the following external services under specific conditions. No data is sent automatically — all connections are triggered by explicit admin action or explicit site configuration. In the WordPress.org distribution, all AI features are opt-in and OFF by default: the plugin makes no remote requests of any kind until an administrator enables AI features in Settings > Scolta or configures an API key.

GitHub API (api.github.com)

When: An administrator runs the wp scolta download-pagefind WP-CLI command to download the Pagefind binary. What is sent: A standard HTTPS GET request to https://api.github.com/repos/CloudCannon/pagefind/releases/latest. No personally identifiable information is transmitted beyond the standard HTTP request headers (IP address, user agent). Service: GitHub, operated by GitHub, Inc. (a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation). Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service Privacy Statement: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement

Pagefind Binary (GitHub Releases / CloudCannon)

When: The wp scolta download-pagefind WP-CLI command downloads the Pagefind binary from GitHub Releases (github.com) after querying the GitHub API above. What is sent: A standard HTTPS GET request to download the release archive. No personally identifiable information is transmitted beyond the standard HTTP request headers. Service: Pagefind is an open-source project (MIT license) created and maintained by CloudCannon. Pagefind: https://pagefind.app/ CloudCannon: https://cloudcannon.com/ Pagefind License: https://github.com/Pagefind/pagefind/blob/main/LICENSE

AI Provider APIs

When: A user performs a search and the site administrator has enabled AI features (ai: true in the Scolta configuration). AI features are disabled by default and require an API key to be configured. What is sent: The user’s search query text and selected page content excerpts (for result summarization) are sent to the configured AI provider’s API endpoint. Providers: The specific provider depends on site configuration. Supported providers are:

• Anthropic (Claude) — processes search queries and page excerpts. API endpoint: api.anthropic.com. Terms of Service: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms Privacy Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy

• OpenAI — processes search queries and page excerpts. API endpoint: api.openai.com. Terms of Use: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy

• OpenAI-compatible endpoints (including self-hosted Ollama and other providers) — any endpoint configured by the site administrator that speaks the OpenAI API protocol. Review the terms and privacy policy of your chosen provider.

• WordPress AI Services (wp-ai-services plugin) — delegates to whichever provider is configured in that plugin. Review the terms and privacy policy of that provider.

No AI API calls are made unless the site administrator has explicitly enabled AI features and configured a valid API key.

Amazee.ai (amazee.ai)

When: Only after an explicit admin action: an administrator clicks « Enable AI features » in Settings > Scolta, or starts a trial / signs in via Settings > Scolta > Amazee.ai. The plugin never contacts amazee.ai on activation or without one of these explicit steps, and the consequences (including exactly what is sent) are stated in the admin UI before confirmation. What is sent: The site admin email address (to create the trial account, sent to api.amazee.ai), or the email address entered during sign-in; and AI search queries and result excerpts when the Amazee.ai gateway is the active AI provider. Service: Amazee.ai, a privacy-respecting AI gateway. Credentials are stored encrypted in the WordPress options table. Terms of Service: https://amazee.ai/terms Privacy Policy: https://amazee.ai/privacy

Source code and compiled assets

The distribution archive contains a small number of compiled or binary files. All of them are required at runtime and built from public, open-source projects:

• assets/wasm/scolta_core_bg.wasm — the browser-side search engine, compiled from the public source at https://github.com/tag1consulting/scolta-core with wasm-pack build --target web --release (output pkg/scolta_core_bg.wasm). No modifications are made to the build output.
• vendor/tag1/scolta-php/assets/pagefind/wasm.en.pagefind, wasm.unknown.pagefind, pagefind.js, and pagefind-worker.js — the unmodified runtime of the open-source Pagefind project (https://github.com/Pagefind/pagefind, MIT license). The indexer copies these files into every generated search index; removing them would break client-side search.
• Dependency LICENSE* files under vendor/ are retained as required by those packages’ license terms.

About Tag1 Consulting

Scolta is designed, built, and maintained by Tag1 Consulting. Tag1 has been delivering technology leadership since 2007 and is one of the leading open-source consulting firms in the world.

Tag1 offers AI strategy, architecture, and implementation consulting — from evaluating whether AI search is right for your organization, to production deployment and ongoing tuning. If you need help integrating Scolta, customizing scoring for your content model, or connecting it to your AI provider of choice, get in touch.