RFC: Semantic search for Arc Bookmarks

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Arc from The Browser Company has been a breath of fresh air. If you’re a tech bro, chances are you’re already using it.

Lately, they’ve been doubling down on AI, and I’m all here for it!

But one thing they have neglected, like all browsers before them, is bookmarks.

The embedded mockups below are not images! They are interactive islands you can play with.

The Problem

Your bookmarks feel great the first week fresh into your new browser.

Actually, you don’t even care. Bookmarks are dumb anyway, they’re just a place to pin links.

But if you’re reading this, you’re probably an information hoarder like myself.

So I bet your bookmarks are gonna look like this the next day:

Bookmarks 24 hours into Arc

And now you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

Time to get your shit together.

The only tool you have at your disposal is folders. So you start aggressively pushing down links behind random folders.

Aaah, much better isn’t it?

But a few days pass, and you just can’t fight the internet dork that you are.

Dumpster fire

At that point, you’ve probably gave up on your bookmarks.

You’re a grown up now. You need a fully-fledged bookmark app. You think it’s gonna solve all your problems.

And it does… for a few days. Alas, you quickly go back to your old ways, and the mess starts cramping up so much that you’re yet again looking for another newer, better, shinier app you haven’t polluted with your bookmarks. Yet.

It’s about time we fix the problem at the root, where it all started: your browser. Let’s fix it in Arc!

The Fix

I don’t know about you, but I want my bookmarks to be like 𝕏 or YouTube: the bigger the library the better it gets.

And that usually means some algorithm or AI shenanigans behind the scenes.

So that’s exactly what I did!

I built a semantic search engine on top of my Arc bookmarks. It searches through the full content not just the title, to help you find what you’re looking for even when all you remember is an idea somewhere down the page.

Give it a try below. Turn the engine on to see what a semantic search for your bookmarks could feel like. Turn it off to see what Arc gives you by default.

Not feeling inspired? Try searching pg microsoft is dead or growth solves all problems

Glorified search for your bookmarks

As a bonus of scraping page content, you get a link to the exact section that matches your search (link to highlight).

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