It's really useful to be able to specify the search space for a specific query (example: Canary allows search for the query "sagemaker" on our docs or on our github issues )
Can you talk about how you implemented search-as-you-type? Doing so with semantic search seems tricked given the roundtrips needed to compute embeddings on the fly (assuming the use of OpenAI embeddings)
The name Canary is a bit confusing, since a lot of companies already use Canary to indicate symptoms of issues (re: canary in coal mine). However the app doesn't fulfill this need.
I have to say Algolia is underwhelming (even after all these years). Perhaps I'm using it wrong, but I often more quickly find the comment or story I'm searching for via a targeted search using Google. I should give Bing a try as I've been been getting better finance related results there lately--especially when trying to locate ratings and / or other docs related to newly issued securities.
I had to use Algolia in a recent ecommerce solution, I think e-commerce really is the sweet spot for what Algolia offers, quick setup not a lot of need to mess around with your rankings etc. with very simple content.
I'm used to Solr and ElasticSearch for most sites I've ran, which tend to be information sites dense where you need to be able to control rankings to get the best results, which HN is much closer to than to an e-commerce site.
Agreed. I dread having to use Algolia search on documentation these days. The search results feel pretty naively selected, and the UI is pretty poor. I get that people want to deploy static sites, but can we please find a way to bring back search _pages_?
Just played around with tinkerbird on Tinkerboard[0]... it doesn't seem to get good results with the provided example data. Why do you think a support for it would be worthwhile?
Glean is used for searching the workspace (AFAIK, for internal use). Canary is used for searching technical documentation, GitHub issues, etc., and is intended for the users of the project.
Took me a little poking around to figure out what the underlying search engine was: it's https://typesense.org/ hosted in a Docker container.
Canary is awesome! we use Canary for our doc search at LiteLLM (you can see it here: https://docs.litellm.ai/docs/)
It's really useful to be able to specify the search space for a specific query (example: Canary allows search for the query "sagemaker" on our docs or on our github issues )
Can you talk about how you implemented search-as-you-type? Doing so with semantic search seems tricked given the roundtrips needed to compute embeddings on the fly (assuming the use of OpenAI embeddings)
Does it have the same API? Have been looking for a way to mock the service in development
In Firefox the "Search for anything" input does not get focused after opening the search dialog.
nice catch! just downloaded firework to test it :) will fix it shortly
looks interesting. there is a typo in the headline ("techincal docs") on https://getcanary.dev/
The name Canary is a bit confusing, since a lot of companies already use Canary to indicate symptoms of issues (re: canary in coal mine). However the app doesn't fulfill this need.
I will give it a try, impressive compression
that's a fair point. I don't think I can rename it at this point, but I'll keep in mind that some people might be confused by the name.
please do try it out, and come to Discord if you want to chat.
This is sweet. I do think the styling on the component could be a bit cleaner though.
Thanks! Could you point out any specific part of the UI that you think could be improved?
Opening up the search needs a softer animation. Take https://ui.shadcn.com/ as an example
got it. I will add some animation in default `canary-modal` implementation.
just FYI - i's very easy to implement custom modal component and swap out the default one.
https://github.com/fastrepl/canary/blob/72723b0/js/apps/docs...
I have to say Algolia is underwhelming (even after all these years). Perhaps I'm using it wrong, but I often more quickly find the comment or story I'm searching for via a targeted search using Google. I should give Bing a try as I've been been getting better finance related results there lately--especially when trying to locate ratings and / or other docs related to newly issued securities.
I had to use Algolia in a recent ecommerce solution, I think e-commerce really is the sweet spot for what Algolia offers, quick setup not a lot of need to mess around with your rankings etc. with very simple content.
I'm used to Solr and ElasticSearch for most sites I've ran, which tend to be information sites dense where you need to be able to control rankings to get the best results, which HN is much closer to than to an e-commerce site.
Have you tried Vertex AI Search for Retail?
Agreed. I dread having to use Algolia search on documentation these days. The search results feel pretty naively selected, and the UI is pretty poor. I get that people want to deploy static sites, but can we please find a way to bring back search _pages_?
You should add support for tinkerbird, so the index can be statically generated and queried without a backend.
https://github.com/wizenheimer/tinkerbird
Just played around with tinkerbird on Tinkerboard[0]... it doesn't seem to get good results with the provided example data. Why do you think a support for it would be worthwhile?
[0]: https://tinkerboard.vercel.app/
How does it compare to Glean?
Glean is used for searching the workspace (AFAIK, for internal use). Canary is used for searching technical documentation, GitHub issues, etc., and is intended for the users of the project.
How did you manage to keep the size so small :O
thanks for noticing!
1. All UI components are written using Lit (lit.dev).
2. I put a lot of effort into making the components as composable as possible, so you can load only what you need.
For anyone interested, we have a chart here: https://getcanary.dev/docs/why#tiny-components-that-work-any...