Problem: The Modern Web is Unusable on Legacy & E-ink Devices While lite.duckduckgo.com, frogfind.com, and other "lite" search engines exist, they only solve half the problem. They give you a lightweight search results page, but as soon as you click a link, you are dumped into a modern, bloat-heavy webpage that crashes old browsers, renders poorly on e-ink, and tracks you.
The Proposed Feature: "Kagi Retro" (Search + Proxy) I propose a first-party Kagi interface similar to FrogFind.com (built by Action Retro). This feature would entail two distinct components:
- A Vintage-Compatible Search Interface: A stripped-down, text-only search page (no JS, minimal CSS) accessible on ancient browsers (Netscape, IE 5) and terminal browsers (Lynx, w3m).
- The Killer Feature: A "Readability" Proxy: When a user clicks a result in this mode, Kagi acts as a middleware proxy. It fetches the destination page, strips all JavaScript, ads, and tracking scripts (using a library like Mozilla's Readability), and serves a clean, static HTML text version to the user.
Why Kagi? This aligns perfectly with Kagi’s mission of a user-centric, privacy-first web. By proxying traffic, Kagi shields the user's IP and fingerprint from the destination site, offering a layer of privacy and speed that no other major search engine currently provides.
Primary Use Case: "Distraction-Free" & Retro Enthusiasts
- Workflow: A user on a vintage Mac (Macintosh SE/30), a Windows 98 gaming PC, or a modern e-ink tablet (like a Remarkable or Kindle) navigates to retro.kagi.com.
- Action: They search for "history of poodles." The results load instantly in basic HTML.
- The Crucial Step: Instead of being sent to a heavy generic pet site that crashes their browser, they click the link and remain within the Kagi "wrapper." Kagi serves them the text content of that page, formatted purely for reading.
Secondary Use Case: Extreme Low-Bandwidth
- Users on satellite connections, 2G/EDGE networks, or high-cost roaming data plans can browse the web with 95% less data usage, as Kagi filters out all heavy assets before sending the data to the client.
Implementation Examples & Inspiration
- FrogFind (Action Retro): Uses a PHP script to strip formatting and serve basic HTML. It is the gold standard for this workflow but is a small hobbyist project. Kagi could professionalize this.
- Mozilla Readability: The open-source library used by Firefox's "Reader View." Kagi could run this server-side to generate the proxied pages.
- Browservice: A proxy server that renders modern web pages to images for old browsers. Kagi's text-only approach would be much faster and bandwidth-efficient.
