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7/29/2026
Paper Finder: A Free AI-Powered Research Tool and the 7-Second Freeze I Had to Debug

Paper Finder: A Free AI-Powered Research Tool and the 7-Second Freeze I Had to Debug

Short summary

Paper Finder is a free in-browser tool that searches arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and Crossref and re-ranks results using all-MiniLM-L6-v2 via transformers.js. The AI model ran on the main thread, causing a 7-second freeze because WASM inference is synchronous CPU work that await cannot offload. Moving the model into a dedicated Web Worker eliminated all long tasks and kept the UI responsive.

  • •In-browser ML model blocked the main thread for 7 seconds despite async/await
  • •WASM inference is synchronous CPU work; await only changes how you receive results, not where computation runs
  • •Moving the model to a Web Worker eliminated all long tasks and kept the search box responsive

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.

#ai-tools#open-source
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