nilch
Web and SaaS
search engine frontend
SHOW HN2025
199points
76comments
#329of 3,837 in 2025
Top 9%of 2025 by points
How HN took it
RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical
4 positive, 10 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 16 critical, out of 30 comments about the project. Thread score -0.38.
Idea: 4 for, 6 againstExecution: 0 for, 8 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Good concept of ad-free, non-profit search with DDG bangs
From 2 comments
The fact that “no ads and no AI” reads like a luxury feature set in 2025 says a lot about the state of search. Nice reset to sane defaults.
soldthat on HNAwesome project, I have a quick suggestion but can you please make adding custom ddg bangs into your project itself rather quickly? There was this project on hackernews which was…
Imustaskforhelp on HN
Objections
It is just a thin frontend over the Brave Search API, not a real search engine
From 3 comments
Right now it seems like the project is just a thin wrapper over Brave Search. Building a complete search engine is way harder than that. You could look into using…
Tiberium on HN> nilch uses the Brave search API internally for results. I wish wrappers would stop being called search engines. Google is a search engine, and so is Bing, and Yandex, and…
immibis on HNSo it's not a search engine, it's a frontend for a search engine.
RadiozRadioz on HN
Non-profit status unverified; appears to be a sole proprietorship
From 1 comment
You can just turn off the AI feature in Brave search so it’s sort of extra pointless. It’s possibly worth pointing out that the about page doesn’t offer any indicator that this…
dangus on HN
Open ranking algorithm would help spammers
From 1 comment
I believe an open source ranking algorithm is antithetical to good search, sadly. It hands spammers a recipe for how to push past legitimate sites to dominate the search results.
everfree on HN
Bugs with quoted searches and JSON errors
From 3 comments
Doesn't seem to like double-quoted search strings: ``` SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data ``` Single-quotes don't seem to work…
axiolite on HNI get this error anytime I search anything. ``` Error loading search results. Please try again. SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected keyword at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data ```
ILoveHorses on HNSearching for "DOMContentLoaded" gives me an error "'noresults' is not valid JSON" and the page gets stuck in an infinite refresh loop. Edit: It's actually unrelated to the…
thesdev on HN
Requests
Support DDG-style bangs anywhere in query and bare '!' to open first result
From 1 comment
Interesting project. Thanks for sharing. I am also a fan of DDG bangs and I see two missing features: 1. DDG supports bangs at any place in the query (even in the middle of it).…
ckardaris on HN
Autocomplete suggestions
From 1 comment
Will you include suggested autocomplete searches?
angel- on HN
Fix input validation and quoted search handling
From 2 comments
You NEED to validate/escape untrusted input. Searching “ causes an error https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Input_Validation_Cheat_Sheet.html
supermatt on HNDoesn't seem to like double-quoted search strings: ``` SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data ``` Single-quotes don't seem to work…
axiolite on HN
Questions
How is it better than Brave Search or searxng?
From 2 comments
How is it better?
sjs382 on HNHow is it different from searxng then?
renegat0x0 on HN
Alternatives named
Brave Search
From 2 comments
Why would I use this over Brave search if I were already using it? Especially when all it seems to add is a childish rant against LLMs, "G**gle" and "D*ckD*ckGo".
GaryBluto on HNYou can just turn off the AI feature in Brave search so it’s sort of extra pointless. It’s possibly worth pointing out that the about page doesn’t offer any indicator that this…
dangus on HN
Kagi
From 1 comment
You can just turn off the AI feature in Brave search so it’s sort of extra pointless. It’s possibly worth pointing out that the about page doesn’t offer any indicator that this…
dangus on HN
SearXNG
From 1 comment
How is it different from searxng then?
renegat0x0 on HN
Marginalia Search
From 1 comment
Right now it seems like the project is just a thin wrapper over Brave Search. Building a complete search engine is way harder than that. You could look into using…
Tiberium on HN
YaCy
From 1 comment
It's possible, see the YaCy project. It suffer from probably a couple of orders of magnitude too few resources (in the funding/development sense) to really be competitive though.
Marsymars on HN