This is a submission for the Algolia MCP Server Challenge

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• What I Build
• Demo
• How I Utilized the Algolia MCP Server
• Key Takeaways

What I Built

Welcome to searchA11y – your new sidekick in the world of inclusive web development! This is not just any search engine. It’s a superpowered, high-speed, accessibility-focused search tool that brings together blog posts and articles from top-tier accessibility experts like Adrian Roselli, Sara Soueidan, Léonie Watson, Manuel Matuzović, and more.

Why? Let’s be real — the web is full of accessibility advice that’s... well, hot garbage. But for devs who are just starting out, the good stuff and the nonsense often look exactly the same. It’s like trying to find a semantic needle in a div-styled haystack.
And many brilliant blog posts are scattered across the web, with little or no built-in search. So I thought, “Hey, what if I made one place to rule them all?”

For many of these valuable resources, this application provides a much-needed search functionality that was previously unavailable, empowering developers, designers, and accessibility advocates to find specific information quickly and efficiently.

The project consists of two main components:

1. A Node.js Backend Script: This data-collection service runs on a schedule. It systematically fetches the latest content from multiple RSS feeds, cleans and structures the data, and securely pushes it to an Algolia index.
2. A Vanilla JavaScript Frontend: A lightweight and performant user interface built with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It communicates directly with the Algolia API to provide a rich, interactive search experience without the overhead of a large framework. Thanks to Algolia’s API, it feels faster than a screen reader reading alt text on fast-forward.

The final application delivers an experience far beyond a simple text search, incorporating advanced features like full-text content search, author filtering, and responsive pagination.

Demo

The live demonstration of searchA11y showcases the following user journey:

- Clean Landing Page: Say "Hello 👋🏽" to a clean, single-column interface featuring a prominent search bar and a horizontal filter bar of author names. A list of the most recent articles is displayed by default.
- Instant Search (possibility): As you begin typing a query like "aria lab", the search results could update in real-time with every keystroke, immediately displaying articles with "ARIA label" in the title or content. Yes, Algolia can make this possible. But to keep the user experience for Screen Reader users as high as possible, we should choose the old fashion way by hitting the enter key to submit the search key word(s), and provide a toggle for users who prefer the real-time version.
- Intelligent Snippets: Below each result's title, a relevant snippet from the article's content is displayed. If you searched for a term, that term is highlighted within the snippet, providing immediate context. Super helpful, right?
- Author Filtering: Click on Sara or Léonie’s names and instantly filter the results. The result set instantly refines to show only articles written by those two authors. The selected author buttons are underlined, providing clear visual feedback.
- Responsive Pagination: As you scroll to the bottom, you see a full pagination bar. When viewing the site on a mobile device, this bar automatically condenses to a shorter, mobile-friendly version to preserve screen space.

How I Utilized the Algolia MCP Server

Indexing Like a Pro

The backend script connects securely to the Algolia server using the Admin API Key to perform indexing operations. I used Algolia's saveObjects method with the autoGenerateObjectIDIfNotExist option to ensure robust and resilient data ingestion. The clearObjects command is used before each run to guarantee the index remains fresh and free of stale content.

Smart Search Features

The frontend communicates directly with the Algolia platform using the Search-Only API Key. It delivers lightning-fast results — and with hardly any code on my end! Here’s what’s happening under the hood:

Faceting: By configuring author as an Attribute for Faceting in the dashboard, I enabled the Algolia server to pre-calculate the list of all authors for the filter panel. This is a server-side operation that makes the frontend filter widget incredibly fast.

Snippeting: I configured content as a searchable attribute for snippeting. This allows the frontend to request an intelligent excerpt of the main article text, with the search query highlighted, without having to download the entire article content to the browser.

Typo Tolerance: All search queries benefit from Algolia's built-in typo tolerance and its sophisticated relevance ranking algorithm. This logic runs entirely on Algolia's servers, ensuring that even a simple frontend can deliver highly relevant results for complex or misspelled queries. Even if you type “axessibility,” Algolia’s got your back.

It's like having a librarian, auto-correct engine, and mind reader all rolled into one.

Key Takeaways

1. Start with the Hard Stuff (a.k.a. Backend First, Regret Never)
As a frontend enthusiast, I have a tendency to jump straight into the part I love most — designing, tweaking, and endlessly “just fixing one more thing” on the UI. But if there’s one universal truth in frontend development, it’s this: the frontend is never truly done. What looked perfect yesterday somehow feels off today.

This time, I broke the habit. I forced myself to start with the backend — reading through the developer docs, studying example implementations, and setting up the data ingestion process first. By focusing early on the backend logic, indexing flow, and how Algolia would fit into it all, I laid a solid foundation. The frontend followed naturally, evolving feature by feature: search box first, then filters, pagination, and so on.

2. Garbage In, Garbage Out: Data Quality Is Everything
One of the biggest (and earliest) lessons learned was that your output is only as reliable as your input. Parsing RSS feeds sounds easy — until you encounter broken feeds, inconsistent data fields, and sources that limit access (Adrian Roselli’s feed only shows the 10 most recent posts — a tragedy, honestly).

Defensive coding became a necessity: validating dates, checking for missing values, and gracefully skipping bad records. Some blogs I had hoped to include had no RSS feeds at all, which meant they had to be left out (for now).

Lesson learned: reliable data sources are just as important as clever code.

3. Frontend, Finally — and Lightweight by Design
Once the backend was humming along and the index was behaving, I turned to the frontend. I opted for plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to keep things lightweight and accessible — no frameworks, no bloat. The result? A responsive, fast-loading interface that works well across devices and remains easy to maintain.

Sometimes the best developer experience comes from simplicity. And with the provided styles from Algolia, I didn't have to change much.

4. Accessibility-First Dev Workflows Are Not Plug-and-Play
While Algolia offers a great developer experience overall, some of the default examples don’t quite hit the mark when it comes to semantic HTML or accessibility best practices. For someone like me who deeply values clean, accessible code, that would have meant to override quite a few default components.

The good news? Algolia makes that possible (Customize your Widgets). You can override almost everything, and that flexibility made all the difference. It allows me to build a frontend that aligns with my standards — both as a developer and as an advocate for inclusive design.

‼️ Dear Algolia Team, do you want to make your tools more accessible by default? Just ping me 😇

5. Don't Reinvent the Wheel — Use the Good Ones Already Out There
This project was a great reminder that I don’t have to build everything from scratch. Tools like Algolia exist for a reason — and using them can save time, reduce complexity, and allow you to focus on building what makes your project unique.

In short: good tools don’t just accelerate development, they enable it.

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Throughout the process, I kept asking myself: “If I were a developer new to accessibility, what kind of search experience would actually help me?”

searchA11y is more than a search engine — it’s a resource hub, a learning portal, and a love letter to the accessibility community.

Built with care. Backed by Algolia. Searchable by everyone.

Now go ahead and give it a whirl. Your next favorite blog post is just a keystroke away.