Live data from Hacker News

Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

kagifeedback.org

41–50 of 110 posts

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#41
post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

I happened to be checking out kagi just yesterday (as a first time costumer) and I can say the AI focus put me off it. I was running away from the constant shoving of AI features by google, so most of their landing page advertising AI related stuff wasn't really selling it for me. Totally anecdotal evidence, of course, but I'm sure I'm not the only one dropping off the funnel for that reason.

My comment sounds negative, but for what it's worth, I still am a very happy user, and you can disable assistant/quick answer so it's never pushed on you if you don't care about it.

I just don't want Kagi to get enshittified. If everybody and their dog are focusing on AI, good-old search becomes a vanishing product space which definitely still has its place in the AI era, when you want determinism from your search.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#42
I use Kagi search all the time. I often use the Quick Answer feature (append "?" at the end of the query, gives an AI overview/answer, then standard search results below). I never use the full Assistant - I have ChatGPT and Claude for chatbot use cases.

I like Quick Answer because of its ligtweight UX. Ctrl-T for a new tab in any browser window, type the question, get the answer. This is faster and mentally lighter than switching to a chatbot, typing the question there and answering. If I'm to use the chatbot, I don't see a special need to use Kagi's.

(my €0.02 as a paid user)

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#43
post #29
post #5

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff. Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

They could use AI is to remove web pages with AI generated spam content in search results. I don't know how accurate that could work. For technical blogs there should be a lens that ranks GPG signed articles higher, is that even possible?

They're working on it: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html

Discussed at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716806

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#44
To be honest, while it's great that it uses Kagi as its search engine and that improves the results, I find myself more and more using Claude and Gemini over Assistant while still using Kagi as my main manual search engine. They should probably focus more on their main product instead of LLMs.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#46
post #34
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder that you're not forced to use it. "I despise soccer, so soccer should disappear".

Soccer is not destroying the planet and making basic computer hardware unaffordable.

You're looking at the finger and missing the Moon.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#47
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder that you're not forced to use it. "I despise soccer, so soccer should disappear".

You still have to live in a world where LLMs exist and are based on the stolen labor of millions of people and are actively destroying the livelihood of people, our environment and democracy.

Again, right now the assistant is entirely optional. Oh, summarizer and translate are base on the same models, by the way.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#48

Why is this on a whole separate domain and why can't I use my Kagi account to comment? Why do I have to sign up here? Why haven't I seen any messaging from Kagi directly about this? This seems really weird.

Those domains have been around since forever (also https://orionfeedback.org). I guess it was easier to just set up a new platform instead of integrating it, or building something from scratch.

I haven't checked in a while, but I'm sure there's been conversations about this on discord as well (https://help.kagi.com/kagi/support-and-community/discord-ser...). I'm too busy to read up on every little thing, so I'm glad this happens elsewhere, off-site, and I just get the big changes through my RSS feed.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#49

To me this seems fine. You'd run out of tokens pretty quick without ultimate anyway, so it is a small cross section of users this affects. I am interested to learn if anything else is coming besides a billing change. Like will ultimate/assistant subscribers get access to MCP?

Well, no... I use maybe 1/5 to 1/3 of may month allowance on Assistant. It's nice to have. And I subscribed to Kagi also because of it. So, the Assistant going away would mean my expensive Duo subscription going away as well.

Re: Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

#50
If they remove a feature (even if I am not using it) while keeping the price the same - why should I stay a customer? I have a contract. And at least in Germany one party to a contract can not just alter the terms of the contract.

They need to cancel the existing contract and offer a new one. And I would not need to accept the new one. Yes, I would not be using Kagi anymore. But why should I have a business relationship with a company that does not honor the contractual obligations it entered into?

Post reply on HN