TL;DR: Amazing idea, I've played around with a quick-and-dirty prototype, and it's fairly working (if you are mad enough, you can even say useful). Sharing it for feedback/thoughts. Also proposing self-contained URLs for Kagi Lenses to improve security and user experience.
I love the idea of getting all the shared Lenses in one place, since it's an amazing way to show the power and creative force of Kagi's community. Building a centralized discovery mechanism for community-created Lenses is complex, but could increase feature understanding, adoption and provides an amazing feedback loop to improve Lenses as a feature in the long run.
We want a place that you can use to immediately enhance your search experience, and share your specialized search configurations for the community sake. The main security problem is that the included websites can be malicious, or they could be changed to malicious after the initial check, since the Lense shared link stays the same ("bait-and-switch" attack, changing the DNS).
I was trying to find the simplest/easiest first version of something to gather your feedback (and Lenses!). Kagi can then use both when ideating an in-house solution. I wanted to share Oculist with you, and ask for thoughts and feedback.
Features
Phase 1:
β
Users can add their shared Lenses on the leaderboard, specifying all the Lenses options for a quick glance
β
Users can vote on Lenses
β
Order by votes or added date
β
Users can quickly access the shared Lenses link to add it to their Kagi account
Phase 2:
β³ Flag bad Lenses, search, filter Lenses on relevant options (e.g., specific Region when looking for Japan Lenses)
Phase 3:
β³ Categorization, tagging, pagination
Security measures
β
Included websites are checked via Virus Total API when the Lens is added, and then continuously afterward. The Lens is visibly flagged if any of the included websites is malicious/suspicious
β Shared Lens could still be changed after adding it to the leaderboard, making this solution still prone to malicious attack
UX issues
β Copy-pasting the Lens name, description and options from Kagi is annoying as hell, but as a 3rd party I need to store the Lens configuration somehow
To patch the second security issue (and improve the UX pain point), I suggest implementing self-contained URLs for Kagi Lenses, meaning that all the options for the Lens would be shared within the URL. This could be an addition to the current, shorter URL form with the Lens ID. Here's a (fairly extreme) example:
https://kagi.com/lenses/create?name=Comprehensive+Academic+Research&description=This+lens+focuses+on+academic+research+papers+from+reputable+universities+and+journals%2C+excluding+commercial+sites+and+blogs.+Prioritizes+recent+peer-reviewed+papers+in+PDF+format+with+statistical+analysis+and+methodology+sections.+Great+for+graduate+students+and+researchers.&includeWebsites=stanford.edu,harvard.edu,mit.edu,nature.com,science.org,ncbi.nlm.nih.gov,researchgate.net,academia.edu,jstor.org,scholar.google.com&excludeWebsites=quora.com,medium.com,wordpress.com,blogspot.com,facebook.com,twitter.com,instagram.com,youtube.com,buzzfeed.com,reddit.com&includeKeywords=research,methodology,statistical,peer-reviewed,analysis&excludeKeywords=opinion,blog,review,commentary,speculation®ion=International&beforeDate=2025-05-12&afterDate=2020-01-01&bang=acad&autoSuggest=true&renderStyle=Default&fileType=pdf
The self-contained approach:
- Mitigates the bait-and-switch, since each option change generates a different link
- Doesn't change the user flow, since as Kagi user you still end up on the Create Lens page with all the options autopopulated
- Makes it easy to submit Lenses into 3rd party leaderboards, since I can just parse all the options from the URL
Feedback request
- Is that approach to a community lens discovery platform valuable to you?
- Is the self-contained URL approach sensible to you? Am I missing something obvious?
- What additional features would make this platform more useful for you?
Cheers and thanks in advance! π
