The Itch I Couldn't Scratch
Picture this: You're searching through documentation, typing away, and the search results keep flickering between what you typed three characters ago and what you're typing now. It's like having a conversation with someone who's perpetually three seconds behind.
That was my daily reality with Mintlify for over two years.
For context, Mintlify provides hosted documentation sites for developers (think GitBook, but cooler). They acquired my previous company, Trieve, which ironically provided the search infrastructure powering their 30,000+ documentation sites. So not only was I a frustrated user, I was the guy whose search technology was being... let's say "suboptimally implemented."
The problem? They weren't aborting debounced search queries. Every keystroke fired off a new search request, but old requests kept coming back, creating a chaotic race condition that made search feel sluggish and unreliable.
Look at this madness:
I'd mentioned this bug in our shared Slack channels when I was still just a vendor. "Hey, you know your search has this race condition issue?" I'd say, trying to be helpful without being that guy who points out problems in your customer's product.
But it wasn't a priority. Fair enough—there were bigger fish to fry, more critical features to ship, actual revenue-impacting work to do. A slightly janky search experience doesn't tank your business, even if it slowly chips away at your soul every time you use it.
The frustration was real though. I'd built search infrastructure for a living, and watching my own technology get hobbled by a simple frontend oversight was like watching someone use a Ferrari to deliver pizza... in first gear... with the parking brake on.
Sweet, Sweet Revenge (aka The Fix)
Fast forward to post-acquisition: I'm officially on the team, I have access to the codebase, and guess what the very first thing I fixed was?
You got it. That damn search race condition.
The solution? A simple AbortController. When a new search query starts, abort the previous one. Revolutionary stuff, I know. The search results now actually correspond to what you're currently typing instead of playing catch-up with your keystrokes.
This reminded me of when George Hotz joined Twitter for a hot minute after the Elon acquisition, fixed the annoying login popup, then promptly left. Sometimes you just need to scratch that itch yourself.
The Open Source Fantasy
Here's the thing that really gets me: If Mintlify had been open source during those two torturous years, I could have just submitted a PR. One AbortController, maybe 10 lines of code, and boom—problem solved for everyone.
Instead, this tiny annoyance festered across thousands of documentation sites, slowly grinding away at user experience like digital water torture. Not because it was technically challenging to fix, but because it wasn't accessible to the person who cared enough to fix it.
Don't get me wrong—I understand why companies choose proprietary models. There are valid business reasons. But there's something beautifully empowering about open source: when something bothers you, you can actually do something about it instead of just complaining into the void.
The Little Things That Matter
If Mintlify's search feels just a bit snappier now, just a little more responsive when you type—that's me. I fixed the bug that had been haunting my search experience for over two years, and it feels absolutely fantastic.
But here's the bigger picture: This is how legendary products are built.
Not through grand gestures or revolutionary features, but through obsessing over the tiny details that most people would ignore. The 10-millisecond improvements. The edge cases that only affect 0.1% of users. The barely noticeable refinements that somehow make everything feel just a little bit better.
There's something deeply satisfying about finally having the power to fix the things that annoy you. Even if they're microscopic.
Especially if they're microscopic.
Because at the end of the day, user experience isn't built in boardrooms or design sprints. It's built one tiny frustration at a time, one small fix at a time, one AbortController at a time.
And sometimes, the motivation to fix those tiny things is so strong, you'll literally get hired just to do it.
Top comments (26)
such an inspiring story. framing this:
oh and side note: bravo on the acquisition, @skeptrune — keep up your great work
Thank you so much!
Is this all fake? I can't tell?
The em dashes gives it away that you used GPT mostly. The image from the header is a very old image that has been around the internet for ages. The story is good though.
Not fake. There's a more handwritten version of the post on my personal blog if you're curious to read it. I thought this more AI'd style would work better for devto.
I see! Awesome story in this case!
Awesome
Hey Sahra
Hi Abdu
Interesting - especially the ending. Many dev's call what you describe at the end of your article as "micro-optimizing". However, you seem to be advocating for it.
I like it. We've got faster internet and faster computers than ever, and yet I still see spinners everywhere.
Very good job!
I had to deal with the same thing. There is even a further optimization, when you abort the HTTP request, your backend is not dropping the query on the Database!!! which is very important, if you have long running queries with this situation, you cannot abort the Database queries, you have to just wait till they are done.
Sadly, in Nodejs, TypeORM, Prisma or the native driver support this feature at the Database level(I am talking about Postgres)
github.com/brianc/node-postgres/pu...
Actually so inspiring! I don't know why and it's completely unrelated but I remember a quote from favourite movie called 3 idiots:
Don't follow success, chase excellence. Success follows.
Just wondering if that solution still sends requests on every keystroke, even if it aborts them after, does that still reach the server? Would it make sense to just have a small "buffer" delay of no typing before sending the request?
there is a small buffer now. My demo video is a bit exaggerated
There are 2 similar programs that suffer from massive bloat, and cry out for someone to improve them:
Their relative size and complexity, considering what they actually do, is insane.
What a story! Yes, this is what we care about as developers, right? Giving "love" to all the little details which might seem so trivial or unimportant, but really aren't ...
Nice, so why does the Mintify login page not put the cursor in the username field automatically?
Will fix!
Thanks, it's one of my pet leeves
That's one thing I remember about the Grails framework, which I used 15 years ago. It would automatically put the cursor in the first field of a form. I remember being surprised by that, but delightfully so.
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