Static Search & Content Discovery System
A browser-side discovery layer that searches multiple content types without a database, backend, or external search service.
Overview
The website needed useful search without adding a backend or third-party indexing service. The initial implementation covered only Notes and Projects and rendered results through HTML string injection.
Challenge
A true site search needed to cover heterogeneous data: Markdown collections, structured tool records, internal detail routes, and external news sources. It also needed to remain safe and usable with assistive technology.
Approach
Records from five content types are normalized at build time into a common structure containing a type, title, description, URL, and searchable tags. Filtering happens locally in the browser.
Implementation
- Searches Notes, News, Tools, Projects, and Prompts
- Uses pre-rendered DOM nodes instead of injecting HTML strings
- Provides result counts through an ARIA live region
- Handles empty states without a network request
- Keeps the Search page out of search-engine indexes
- Supports the global
/keyboard shortcut
Result
Visitors can find content across the site immediately, while the deployment remains fully static. The same pattern can scale to a moderate personal knowledge base without operational infrastructure.
Lessons Learned
For a focused personal site, a small build-time index can provide a better security and maintenance tradeoff than introducing a database or hosted search product too early.