HACKER Q&A
📣 mlejva

I'm building a search engine for devs. What do you search for on Google?


I'm building a programmable search engine for developers and trying to find out for what things are developers searching on Google most and what's the biggest PITA.

The search engine I'm building will let you create, share, and install extensions (similar to VS Code). Each extension can add more functionality. For example, there's an extension that lets you search in NPM packages, another extension lets you search in StackOverflow, another lets you connect your cloud platform and search in your infrastructure, another in your company internal docs, etc. There aren't any ads, SEO, content marketing, tracking, or personalized content. All extensions are open-sourced. You pay monthly for the service.

The search engine isn't a typical search engine as is Google. It's a desktop app and the goal is to have it deeply integrate with 3rd party services that developers use often. A use case example might look like searching for something like "set up static IP address for VM on AWS". With Google, the results are websites explaining you how to achieve your goal. With the search engine I'm building you can connect your AWS infrastructure and the results are actions that allows you to achieve your goal right away. An action presents you with UI. In this use case, the UI will let you assign an IP address to your VM. You are done in a few seconds.

Here's the website - http://getsidekick.app/.

The short-term goal is to launch an MVP version with support for cloud platforms where you can search for and perform actions like "SSH to instance" or "List load balancers", etc. Then add support for more services and learn more from developers.


  👤 detaro Accepted Answer ✓
For searching docs, understanding versions is important. E.g. Google often leads you to some version of the documentation, not necessarily the newest one or the one you currently need.

👤 mlejva
Here's a clickable link http://getsidekick.app/

👤 newsbinator
I’d like by default to see StackOverflow discussions from years later than 2009 as the top hit.