r14dd/patent

A prior-art search for your code ideas — has this dev tool already been shipped?

What it solves

patent is a tool for developers to check if a software idea already exists before they start building it. It automates the process of searching across multiple package registries and community platforms to find "prior art" for dev tools, saving the user from searching each site manually.

How it works

The tool takes a plain-English description of a tool idea and performs the following steps:

  1. Source Selection: It searches 19 different sources, including GitHub, Hacker News, and various package registries (like npm, PyPI, and crates.io).
  2. Semantic Ranking: Instead of simple keyword matching, it uses fastembed to create local embeddings of the results and ranks them by cosine similarity to the original idea.
  3. Maintenance Check: It flags projects that haven't been updated in over two years as stale.
  4. Verdict Generation: An LLM (via Ollama locally or a cloud API) summarizes the landscape into one of three categories: Open (nothing close found), Crowded (a few adjacent tools exist), and Saturated (the space is densely populated).

Who it’s for

Developers and creators who want to validate their project ideas and identify existing similar tools before committing to development.

Highlights

  • Semantic Search: Finds close matches even if the wording is different.
  • Multi-source Fan-out: Searches 19 registries and platforms simultaneously.
  • Local-first Privacy: Supports local LLMs via Ollama and local embeddings for privacy.
  • JSON Output: Can be piped to other tools like jq for automation.
  • TUI Interface: Includes an interactive terminal user interface for browsing results.

Related

  • Project
    BeaconBay/ck

    ck is a Rust‑based CLI/TUI tool that builds local embeddings of source code and lets you search by meaning (semantic search) as well as by traditional regex. It supports incremental indexing, multiple embedding models, AI‑agent integration via an MCP server, and outputs results in JSON/JSONL for automation.

  • Project
    vercel-labs/opensrc

    A CLI tool that fetches and caches source code from npm, PyPI, crates.io, and GitHub to give coding agents access to package implementations.

  • Project
    mnemox-ai/idea-reality-mcp

    An MCP server that automatically scans GitHub, npm, PyPI, Hacker News, and Stack Overflow to determine if a startup idea already exists and provides a reality score.

  • Project
    zamalali/DeepGit

    An agentic research engine for GitHub that uses LLMs and semantic recall to find the best-fitting repositories based on intent and source code analysis rather than just keywords or stars.

  • Project
    xxxily/hello-ai

    An AI-driven navigation hub that uses autonomous agents to discover, evaluate, and organize high-quality open-source AI projects from GitHub into an auto-updating directory.