The prolific inventor’s dilemma. But to be fair developers have been making whatever they want since the beginning. Sometimes there doesn’t have to be a ‘why?’.
Haha this. I understand the appeal of "but I can probably roll my own" and "Oh that's a good idea, let's jump into coding" but pre-vibe bots, the effort required would make folks stop and think before jumping into it - is it really a good idea? should I do it just because I can? what problem is it really solving? Who will use this? etc.
It is really annoying if you have a package that is relatively new to the platform, and you type in the exact package name, that package is not reliably the first result.
Minor edge case, but infuriating if you want to check your own packages quickly (without needing to navigate menu > packages > YOUR_PACKAGE).
Still agree with you though, who is npmx actually for?
My only pain point, that I solved with a few lines of elisp, was to go to npmjs, to find the repo link for my dependencies. What's in `node_modules` may be compiled to an inscrutable blob and it's rare to find good library docs.
It sparks more joy than the old one and buddy, that's for frelling enough damn it. Whinge out!
Awful comment. Your comment is bad and should be ashamed.
Use it and disagree! Tell me it in fact does not spark more joy! This just seems pretty clear, ya'll.
It's just generally vastly nicer. I love that file exploration of packages doesn't feel like a last afterthought before leaving the solar system forever.
npmx maintainer here! a few answers to questions i see:
we haven’t launched yet! we’re building openly but aiming for march 3. as is par for the course, hn gets the scoop.
i made the first commit two weeks ago, so it’s very new. but we’ve had 900+ PRs and 170+ contributors in the last fortnight… because this is something we care about.
having said that, i’m taking notes about what is and isn’t intuitive
npmjs remains the source of truth for the registry, which is why we get our data from there
but along the way we add a lot of features, like:
- claiming new packages from the ui
- batch admin operations for your orgs, teams and packages
- total install size, vulnerabilities and deprecations for your transitive dependencies
- generated docs for packages
- linkable package contents
- and more
I don’t get it. What does it do? How can I trust it over simply visiting https://www.npmjs.com/ (which is perfectly fine to browse)?
Edit: it wants me to connect to the “atmosphere” - is this the Bluesky App Store thing? I really don’t see how linking my socials to npm search makes sense.
There’s also https://v1.run/ (packrun.dev) experimenting with an npm registry for agents that adds package scoring and MCP integration for AI coding assistants.
I've always defaulted to using https://yarnpkg.com/ to search for packages cause the npmjs.com search is so slow, but while the yarnpkg.com search is super fast, actually clicking on a package and seeing the details page takes forever.
This is super fast for both search and the details page, and it's super keyboard friendly which makes it even faster to use in practice. Definitely going to become my go-to search now. Love it, thanks for building it!
I'm not sure what features I'm supposed to notice that are better, but having built-in API docs and source code browsing is nice. (Though slightly laggy.)
Nit: there are distracting animations, such as on the weekly download graph.
The typeahead search speed is genuinely impressive. I was typing package names and the results were appearing before I'd finished the keystroke—that's the kind of responsiveness you usually only see with native applications.
As someone who spent a year obsessing over performance in a .NET MAUI app (IMAP processing, background execution, API latency), I know how hard it is to shave milliseconds off search. The npm registry is massive, and you're clearly doing something right on the indexing or caching side.
Are you using client-side filtering with a pre-built index? Server-side with some clever caching strategy? I'm genuinely curious about the architecture choices that got you to "uncannily fast" territory—especially compared to the official npmjs.com search.
Whatever you're doing under the hood, it shows. Performance is a feature.
I hate the trend of moving away from being able to search packages from the command line to searching inside a bloated web browser. It had a happened with PyPI. And now npm. Please stop this madness.
Browsing is not search though. But I must say that modern browsing is not browsing either, it's search-centered. It would be great to be able to actually browse things like in a store or a library.
> It's good npmx.dev shows git and https dependencies. I still think it's crazy npmjs.org doesn't.
https://bsky.app/profile/dsherret.bsky.social/post/3mer2diwj...
npmjs.com is not slow and not something I need to interact with very often.
And npmjs.com is still the authority when it comes to publishing packages, no? So I'd still have to use it.
Me personally, I’m writing tools for myself wouldn’t have bothered with before due the the time investment needed.
When I do it’s just to click on the repo link.
Minor edge case, but infuriating if you want to check your own packages quickly (without needing to navigate menu > packages > YOUR_PACKAGE).
Still agree with you though, who is npmx actually for?
I have had the thought "NPM search sorted by downloads this week is giving me irrelevant packages" - but I'm not sure this tool solves that.
No idea where I found this but I’ve been using for many, many years.
Awful comment. Your comment is bad and should be ashamed.
Use it and disagree! Tell me it in fact does not spark more joy! This just seems pretty clear, ya'll.
It's just generally vastly nicer. I love that file exploration of packages doesn't feel like a last afterthought before leaving the solar system forever.
Another could be to have an "alternatives" section based on semantic similarity and / or some other features that have signal.
we haven’t launched yet! we’re building openly but aiming for march 3. as is par for the course, hn gets the scoop.
i made the first commit two weeks ago, so it’s very new. but we’ve had 900+ PRs and 170+ contributors in the last fortnight… because this is something we care about.
having said that, i’m taking notes about what is and isn’t intuitive
npmjs remains the source of truth for the registry, which is why we get our data from there
but along the way we add a lot of features, like: - claiming new packages from the ui - batch admin operations for your orgs, teams and packages - total install size, vulnerabilities and deprecations for your transitive dependencies - generated docs for packages - linkable package contents - and more
it’s not _exactly_ the same as if you install with npm and check the size of your node_modules but it’s a pretty good proxy
having said that, there’s room to make it better
> `[nuxt] Cannot load payload /package/@storybook/addon-docs/_payload.json?c459501f-8eb7-49c9-be9c-4a197fa35a39 Error: Invalid input`
- Scrolling fast on Firefox + Chrome is broken and resets the search results page to start.
- Pressing up/down arrows should navigate search item results instead of focusing individual tag elements.
Edit: it wants me to connect to the “atmosphere” - is this the Bluesky App Store thing? I really don’t see how linking my socials to npm search makes sense.
I've always defaulted to using https://yarnpkg.com/ to search for packages cause the npmjs.com search is so slow, but while the yarnpkg.com search is super fast, actually clicking on a package and seeing the details page takes forever.
This is super fast for both search and the details page, and it's super keyboard friendly which makes it even faster to use in practice. Definitely going to become my go-to search now. Love it, thanks for building it!
Nit: there are distracting animations, such as on the weekly download graph.
As someone who spent a year obsessing over performance in a .NET MAUI app (IMAP processing, background execution, API latency), I know how hard it is to shave milliseconds off search. The npm registry is massive, and you're clearly doing something right on the indexing or caching side.
Are you using client-side filtering with a pre-built index? Server-side with some clever caching strategy? I'm genuinely curious about the architecture choices that got you to "uncannily fast" territory—especially compared to the official npmjs.com search.
Whatever you're doing under the hood, it shows. Performance is a feature.
Did you create this? If not how did you come across it?