Just hit my monthly search limit on Kagi’s starter plan. Turns out we still need traditional web search even with AI everywhere.

@manton I guess this is an endorsement of Kagi?

@scottjohnson.wtf Yes, I like Kagi a lot. Less clutter, no ads.

@manton Might gave to finally make the switch Google is just unusable

@manton Did you try any other engines before kagi? I’ve been using startpages and it’s def better than google, can’t decide if it’s actually good enough again tho

@manton I thought you’ve been using it for a while now. Have you been on the starter plan? I’ve switched to the professional plan early on as I ran out quickly, and these days I use it all the time to test different LLMs. The integrated bangs (for my own blog) and being able to ask their assistant for so many things…

What tasks have you noticed LLMs fail at, or don’t do as well? I’m curious :)

@jtr I’m curious about bangs. I can’t get my head around them and where they become extra useful? Something I really need to try out more.

@slison It’s a quick way to run a search directly from your address bar without going to the website. I use it on my blog all the time. For example, if I search !blog kagi, my browser will take me to my blog, and run the search in my built-in search on the blog for Kagi posts.

Even more useful: running @blog kagi will run Kagi search (with all its features) narrowed down just to my domain. I can use it, for example, to summarize my own posts. You can do the same with any website you’d like.

@jtr I just looked into it and set it up for my own blog and community forums… mind blown 🤯
Why did I not do this sooner? I didn’t know about custom bangs. I thought it was for the common sites like redding, wikipedia, youtube etc!

@slison I was the same way, until I read through their documents. I was like “wait a minute… I can do my own bangs?? and yes, yes you can.

While on Kagi, another “gem” of theirs I like is their news site. Give it a try. I find that it has just the right amount of news I need (you can always dig further), and you can add topics. Me, I have game news this way :D

@manton this is great. Never previously heard of it. Thanks.

@jtr yeah I have installed the news app on my phone and mac. I much prefer using that to Apple News which is begging for another subscription.

@jtr I’ve been using Kagi for several months. Looks like I just barely sneak under the limit each month. For LLMs, I mostly stick with ChatGPT. I use web search when I’m already pretty sure what I want is a blog post or web site, not just an “answer”.

@manton that’s a good way to use them. LLMs for your generic questions about things, instead of typing them into a search bar. Search for things that you know you are looking for specifically. Have you tried Ollama on your Mac? I’ve gotten addicted to chatting via the terminal instead of the GUI!

@slison I have used Ollama. It’s not my go-to app but it’s great especially for testing new models.

@manton what is your go-to app?

@jlward ChatGPT for everyday stuff. Codex command-line and cloud for coding.

@byarielm.fyi I haven’t actually tried very many… Over the last couple of years, mostly Google to DuckDuckGo to Kagi.