Open-source Perplexity clone one file back end, streaming answers
Details
- External ID
- 47797393
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Open-source Perplexity clone one file back end, streaming answers
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- April 16, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 6
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.2808483290488432
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
I built an open-source research agent. You ask a question, it searches the web via Tavily, synthesizes an answer with an LLM, and shows the sources it used. Answers stream in real-time.The interesting part is the backend. It's a single JS file (~100 lines) that handles web search, LLM streaming, and per-user conversation history. No vector database, no Redis, no separate storage service.It runs inside a cell — an isolated environment with a built-in database, search index, and filesystem. The cell handles persistence and streaming natively, so the agent code only has to deal with the actual logic.Tech: Next.js frontend, Tavily for search, OpenRouter for LLM (Gemini 2.5 Flash default).Demo: https://youtu.be/jvTVA7J925Y
Enrichment
- Theme
- browser automation and scraping for AI
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Search & retrieval
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- AI-native
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- open-source perplexity alternative
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes The author literally states it is a ~100-line single JavaScript file chaining Tavily search results into an LLM streaming response.
Discussion
2 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Conversation history persistence at scale when cells restart, In-memory storage scalability for large conversation histories
Feature requests: Clarify cross-restart conversation history preservation mechanism
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 53 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #42 of 54 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 166 days after the earliest competitor.
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Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.