Blog

making of scira

•by zaidmukaddam

What is Scira?

Let's start with what Scira is first—Scira is a minimalistic AI search engine built in search of simplicity and minimalism.

The itch

Last year, in August 2024, I wasn't doing much stuff. I was just sitting there, thinking about what I should do next. For the last 2 months (June and July) I'd been experimenting with the Vercel AI SDK, but I wanted to do something solid, something that would make a lasting impact.

Then my dad came in and said, "Why aren't you doing anything? You should be doing something with your skills. You're wasting them doing nothing."

Looking for inspiration, I went to x.com to see what people were up to. That's when I saw a post from Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas, which sparked an idea.

My thoughts on Perplexity AI: being an AI search engine and giving premium features in its Pro plan doesn't make any sense as most of them are very basic and could be better.

So I decided to create MiniPerplx (now Scira), a minimalistic AI search engine that would be simple and easy to use. I started working on it on August 4th, 2024 and made a post on 𝕏 about it on August 6th.

On 7th August, I officially announced MiniPerplx on 𝕏 and it went viral! Getting 14,000 impressions was huge for me and showed people were interested in what I was building.

The AI SDK arc

When I started building Scira (then MiniPerplx), I needed tools that were both powerful and easy to understand. The Vercel AI SDK was perfect since I'd already been experimenting with it and posting about it on 𝕏.

It was a natural choice for building an AI search engine - the SDK made it straightforward to implement the generative AI features I needed, so I could focus on making the experience simple for users.

MiniPerplx → Scira?

I soon(very late) realized the name "MiniPerplx" was too similar to Perplexity AI. I wanted to make it clear that my AI search engine was different and had its own identity. Looking for something meaningful, I found that the Latin word "scire" means "to know," which perfectly captured the goal of my product. I changed the “e” to “a” to make it sound nice and "Scira" was born.

Sponsorships and Partnerships

As Scira grew, I was fortunate to gain support from several companies and startups:

  • Vercel

  • xAI

  • Tavily

  • Exa

  • Warp

  • E2B

  • Mem0

Thanks to their sponsorships, Scira has been able to operate and grow for more than 7 months now.

Vercel CEO’s response to Scira’s launch

@rauchg—vercel ceo—praising scira's launch

Stats

Today, Scira gets over 2,000 visitors daily and is growing rapidly. We've conducted close to 1 million searches so far, and our Github repository has reached 7k+ stars and 850+ forks.