ask your site anything.

Search is already on. Press the globe in the header, or Cmd+K on a Mac (Ctrl+K on Windows), and type. Your site looks through everything you have published and lists what matches. There is nothing to sign up for and no key to add. This step shows you what it finds, how to help people find your work, and, only if you want it, how to connect a knowledge base of your own.

It finds	It looks at
Your articles	Title, subtitle, category and every paragraph of each published article
Your stories	Title, subtitle, category, author and the full text of each published story
Your main pages	The names of the ABOUT, BUILD and CONNECT pages, like about, founders and privacy
Your steps	Title and description of steps visible to everyone

It finds: Your articles
It looks at: Title, subtitle, category and every paragraph of each published article

Searches stay on your site — nothing anyone types is sent anywhere else, unless you connect a knowledge base in part 3
Drafts stay hidden — an article or story that is not published never shows up

this is a work in progress

Try it.
Search for your own work.
Words.
Write so people find it.
Connect.
Optional: your knowledge base.

Try it.
Search for your own work.

Success.a search for your newest article finds it.

1️⃣ Search for Your Own Work

Open your site, on your computer or on the live address
Press the globe in the header, or Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows)
Type one word from the title of your first article. It shows up, marked ARTICLE
Type a word that only appears deep inside one of your stories. It shows up too, marked STORY
Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click, to open a result

Above the results, a short line counts them, like 7 thoughts • 7 APP. APP means they came from your own site. Once you connect a knowledge base, a second number appears for it.

2️⃣ Write So People Find It

Your search matches the exact letters people type, anywhere in a word. It does not guess. Someone who types launch finds an article that says launching, but someone who types start does not. So the words you choose decide what people find.

Where the word is	How high it ranks
A page name, exactly	First
An article or story title	Near the top
A subtitle	High
A category, or only in the text	Lower

Where the word is: A page name, exactly
How high it ranks: First

Title it with the word people will type — a title like Launching Your Shop is found by launch, launching and shop
Say it in the subtitle too — if people might call it something else, use that word in the subtitle
One idea per article — the 20 best matches are all anyone sees, so a short, focused article ranks better than one mention in a long one

3️⃣ Optional: Connect Your Knowledge Base

Most founders stop at step 2. This part is for you if you keep notes, docs or a wiki somewhere else and want your search to answer from them too. Your site can ask one more service, a search API, every time someone searches, and mix its answers in with your own.

unparty.app does this with a service of its own that searches our docs and wiki. That service is not part of your copy, so this part tells you exactly what yours has to do. If you are not building one, you are done.

🔌 What Your Search API Has to Do

Answer at /api/chat on its own address, like https://search.yourname.com/api/chat
Accept a POST with the search in it, the way a chat message is sent
Answer within 5 seconds. A slower answer is dropped and your own results show alone
Answer with a short list in Markdown: a numbered, bold title, its relevance from 0 to 1, a sentence or two, and a link

json

# What your site sends
POST https://search.yourname.com/api/chat
{ "messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "pricing" }] }

# What your search API answers
{
  "role": "assistant",
  "content": "**1. How we price** (relevance: 0.82)\nWhy every plan is one price.\n[View full document](https://docs.yourname.com/pricing)\n\n**2. Refunds** (relevance: 0.61)\nWhen and how to ask.\n[View full document](https://docs.yourname.com/refunds)"
}

Then tell your site where it is. Put the address in .env, without /api/chat on the end, and add the same line to Vercel's Environment Variables, then redeploy:

bash

# .env
SEARCH_API_URL="https://search.yourname.com"

Search for something only your knowledge base knows. The line above the results now ends in a second number, like 7 APP • 5 API, and those results carry a small arrow: they open on the other site.

⚠️ Good to Know

New work can take 5 minutes to show — your site remembers each search for 5 minutes, so a search you just tried may not include an article you published since
Searches leave your site once you connect — your search API sees every word people type. Say so in your privacy policy, in src/data/privacypolicy.json
Your site never waits long — if your search API is down or slow, people still get your own results, with a small Limited results note

🧯 If Something Is Off

Your new article does not show up — check it is published and registered: open its address. If it opens, wait 5 minutes and search again
No API number above the results — SEARCH_API_URL is missing where you tested. Restart npm run dev, or redeploy on Vercel after adding it
Limited results (search API unavailable) — your site reached the address but got nothing back. In the terminal running npm run dev (or your Vercel logs), look for a line starting with External search API failed
API results go nowhere when clicked — your answer has no View full document link, or the link is wrong

🤖 Ask Your LLM

prompt

Here are the titles and subtitles of my articles: [paste them].
People looking for them would type words like [list a few].
Suggest a title and subtitle for each that uses the words people
would actually type, in my voice.

I want a small search API for my notes in [say where they live].
It must answer POST /api/chat with { messages } in under 5
seconds, in exactly this format: [paste the answer example from
this article]. What is the simplest way to build and host it?

✅ You Are Done When

A search for a word in your newest article finds it
A search for a word deep in one of your stories finds it
Your titles use the words people will type
Only if you connected one: the line above your results shows an API number

Everything you publish is now one keystroke away, for anyone who visits. Next, see what your site keeps out of GitHub, in What git leaves out.

“If they cannot find it, you did not ship it.”
— unparty-app