Show HN: vbang2 – DDG-Style Bangs with Customizations

I’ve been using DDG’s “bang” feature (search engine shortcuts) for many years and continue to use it after migrating to Kagi. However, the ergonomics of bangs are suboptimal as the leading character `!` takes extra finger travels (on desktop) or taps (on mobile) to input, and there’s no way to customize the catalog of bangs, at least before paying for Kagi.

Therefore I made the simple Node application that emulates bangs with the single variation that the leading character `!` is replaced with `v` (case-insensitive to accommodate iOS’ auto-captalization), which is easier to input on either desktop or mobile. An OpenSearch manifest is included so the site can be discovered by browsers and eligible to be set as the default search engine. You can also supply your own catalog of bangs following the format of DDG’s `bang.js`.

A preview deployment is available at https://vbang2.vercel.app/ and you are invited to deploy your own instance (instructions in readme). I’m completely new to Node so please tolerate sharp corners all over the project :)