Tukuk-OSTukuk-OS looks simple on the surface, but behind the search box are dozens of small features built over years. This article opens each one so you know what you can ask of this system.
Web Search With Full Filtering
When you type a query, Tukuk-OS sends it to Meilisearch, which searches our halaman_web index. Results are ordered by a relevance score that prefers matches in titles, then headings, then body text.
Once results appear you can filter by:
- Language (en, ms, etc.) — determined during crawling.
- Domain / publisher — to narrow to sources you trust.
- Content type — articles, documentation, forums, and more.
These filters work because the right fields were defined in the index from the start. Adding just a new siteName field is enough for the "Publisher" link to appear in the UI with no client work.
Suggestions and Autocomplete
As you type, /suggest returns page titles close to your query. Click any suggestion and the search box fills instantly. This feature looks small, but it reduces typos and helps users find more specific pages than they initially had in mind.
Image and Video Search
The Images and Videos tabs are not just another display — they are a separate source aggregation. Images come from a major image engine with page support (page 1, page 2, and so on), while videos come from YouTube including duration, channel, and view counts.
Every image result shows the title, the original source, and a link to the original page — so credit always goes back to the creator. The "load more" button calls the same endpoint with a new page parameter, so you can keep scrolling without reloading.
Mobile Experience and Shortcuts
More than half of Tukuk-OS visitors open the site from a phone, so mobile design is not an addition — it is the primary design. The search box fills the screen, media tabs switch with one tap, and the image grid uses three columns on small screens so you can thumb through results without losing your place.
I also added a few keyboard shortcuts for desktop users: focus the search box with /, and navigate results with the arrow keys. Shortcuts look minor, but for frequent searchers they shorten every search by a few seconds — accumulated over a day that is a noticeable saving.
Another design decision I am proud of: search results are preserved when you switch between Web, Images, and Videos. Your query does not vanish and you never retype it. It sounds basic, but many search engines clear your query when you change modes — something I learned not to do.
Live NASA Data
The NASA page is a space data hub:
- APOD — Astronomy Picture of the Day, with a full explanation and automatic fallback when the NASA API fails.
- Asteroids — near-Earth objects with their size and distance.
- EPIC — images of Earth taken from the L1 point between Earth and the Sun.
- Sounds of Space — real sounds from space missions, playable right there.
- History & Topics — a timeline of NASA milestones and topic exploration.
All of this data comes straight from NASA unmodified, so it is always accurate and current.
Blog and Content
The Tukuk-OS blog stores technical articles in the local database, renders them through renderMarkdown, and serves them with BlogPosting structured data for search engines. Every article has a title, slug, excerpt, tags, date, and author — and the list is ordered newest first.
The Infrastructure Behind It All
Three things make the features above dependable:
- Automatic backups to Cloudflare R2 every few hours.
- A watchdog that restarts the service if it fails.
- A circuit breaker for external services so NASA or image provider failures never slow the site.
These are invisible in the UI, but without them the other features would feel fragile. That is the Tukuk-OS design philosophy: users only see the fast and stable parts, because the hard work happens behind the curtain.
If you have not explored all of this yet, start with the NASA tab, then try image search on your favourite topic, and finally read through the blog. You may be surprised how much one small server can do.