Developer logs every step of building a PyPI search tool using Claude AI as co-programmer
A developer has published a detailed engineering log documenting the full process of building 'findmypylibrary', a command-line tool that helps Python users find the right package for a given task. The tool draws on real PyPI download data and package metadata rather than relying on a language model's memory, and works offline after an initial data download with no API key required. Built in collaboration with Anthropic's Claude Code AI assistant, the project covers 15,000 of the most-downloaded PyPI packages sourced from two keyless public data endpoints. The log candidly includes bugs, wrong turns, and rejected approaches — such as twice declining to use embeddings and model downloads to stay within the project's core constraints. The tool is now publicly available on PyPI and returns ranked package results with download counts and last release dates for any natural-language query.
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