Developer fixes 7-second browser freeze in free AI research tool Paper Finder

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A developer built Paper Finder, a free browser-based tool that searches arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and Crossref simultaneously and re-ranks results using an on-device AI model with no API costs. After launch, a user reported severe input lag, and a Chrome DevTools trace revealed a single task was blocking the browser's main thread for over 7,000 milliseconds. The developer initially assumed the AI inference was running asynchronously because it used JavaScript's await keyword, but discovered that WebAssembly-based ML inference is synchronous CPU work that still competes with rendering and user input. The fix involved moving the AI model into a dedicated Web Worker, which offloaded the heavy computation away from the main thread entirely. After the change, performance tests showed zero long-blocking tasks, and the search interface remained fully responsive throughout.

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