Showcase submission: patent

[r14dd]

Project name

patent

Repository URL

https://github.com/r14dd/patent

Submission type

App

What should the showcase viewer notice immediately?

The verdict banner at the top ("Saturated" here) and the ranked table of existing tools under it. At a glance you should get that it searches for prior art and scores how crowded an idea already is.

What is interesting or novel about this project?

It answers "has someone already built this?" You type a plain-English idea and it searches 11 package registries, ranks matches with a local embedding model, and writes a scoped verdict. It's deliberately humble, it can show something exists but never claims something doesn't, and that caveat is part of the UI.

Screenshot or GIF

Submission checklist

• I read the showcase guidance document linked above.
• The text is readable when the media is scaled down.
• The image or GIF focuses on the UI instead of shell commands or setup noise.
• The media uses strong enough contrast and hierarchy to work on the website.
• If this is a GIF, it stays on each important state long enough to read.
• I checked how the media looks on a narrow or mobile-sized viewport.

Anything else reviewers should know?

Happy to provide a tighter GIF or a different example query if it fits the page better.

[orhun]

Very cool one, I like it.

Thoughts? @joshka

[joshka]

I like the look and feel of this generally
Some observations:

• Needs the product name in the title / first line
• From the screenshots it's not obvious that "fuzzy finder in the terminal" is a search term.
• I'd add some interaction with the actual search to show how that works (is it interactive or cli params? if the latter, this is one app I'd choose to show the command line to call it)
• m shortcut for all? (more ;P)
• scrollbar movement is weird - should be based on the amount shown, not the selected item
• Might be a little on the simple side for the showcase, but the good color combination and choice of elements pushes it above some of the other things I've seen
• Weak point is the popup - you could reasonably replace the bottom pane perhaps there (not sure whether that would be better though
• Dwell a little longer on the popup (let the user actually read the entire popup) - add about 20-50% extra time.
• Probably want to make the name the primary thing, and have the github / HN thread title etc. be secondary info

sidenote: I'm surprised fzf doesn't rank higher on this specific search.

[r14dd]

Hi @orhun and @joshka

i hugely appreciate the deep-dive feedback.
I will add all of that to my bucket list of things I am gonna deliver on v0.3.0 (working on it currently)!

On fzf not ranking higher... search recall is the top item on my 0.3.0 roadmap, the current query construction is too keyword sensitive. Working on it.

I will update the submission with a new GIF once these are in. Thanks to you all!

[r14dd]

Hello @joshka and @orhun :

i updated the submission addressed the feedback from the last review:

• scrollbar now tracks viewport offset, not cursor position
• name column is primary; source is dimmed
• GitHub search uses in:description,readme + sort=stars
• npm and HN search the full idea string instead of extracted keywords
• detail popup score-colored border, compact metadata, scrollable description
• bumped to ratatui 0.30.1

New gif and image attached. @joshka happy to tweak further before merge.

[joshka]

Looking good - I'd say it's still just over the border of not quite at showcase level. And the main reason is that it's mostly a single function app - so it looks really good, but realistically in terms of the Ratatui things is demos, that's a list and a popup + the search parts. So it's a cool idea, cool look and feel, but low complexity.

I'm not sure what I'd add to make that different though. Whether there's a path to showcase-ness. I'd like to think there is.

A reminder - lots of subjective stuff in the above - that's the nature of curating a showcase. Happy if the others disagree on this. I'm about 60/40 on this being a no at this point.

[r14dd]

Fair.

I got a few things roadmapped that would add real widget variety such as a bar chart for distribution of the sources, maybe tabbed views instead of one screen and some more. I was also thinking of swapping the detail popup for a persistent bottom split (I do agree with you here). Also I was thinking of making the search dynamic inside the TUI with live progress. Do you think any of these would move the needle? bc im thinking of these in the near releases and your input would validate it for me. Thank you @joshka

[joshka]

probably the search in app would be the key thing. bar charts tend to look kinda janky in demos (to my eyes at least). Tabs might be marginal extra. Simple is good btw. Or at least obvious essential complexity rather than an incidental overload of complexity. When I saw the original screenshot on this I thought it was generally tasteful, and well thought out in design terms.

Put another way, I'd love to see what you build after finishing this.

[r14dd]

Hey @joshka v0.5.0 just shipped!! Caveat with interactive search: run patent with no args and you get a search prompt inside the TUI.

type an idea, results load in-place, press n to search again without restarting

[r14dd]

Hi all. Hope you all are doing alright. @joshka do we any updates? just following up. have a great one!