What's new
Recently shipped
Run 2 — the foundation
The current product. Standard search, AI chat, watchlist, search history, exports, GDPR-compliant data deletion, the credit model, the SellerScore composite, the AI brief generator, score reasoning. Everything you’ve read about in the rest of these docs.
CORS, GZip, and /livez
Operational hardening. The frontend (in hilal-software) can now make cross-origin calls cleanly; payloads are gzipped; and Kubernetes / load balancers have a public liveness endpoint.
Parallelized scoring
Sub-score computation runs in parallel where possible (the calls to external services that can be parallelized are). Search latency dropped meaningfully on multi-product searches.
Export worker hardening
PDF and CSV generation moved to a worker thread (off the asyncio event loop), and PM2 / Docker Compose worker invocations were aligned. Exports are reliable and don’t block the API.
Redis singleton + rate-limit fixes
Internal hardening to prevent flaky behaviour when Redis briefly hiccups. Rate limits now fail closed (deny rather than allow) on Redis errors, but feature flags stay open (so a Redis blip doesn’t lock everyone out of Hilal entirely).
In development
AutoSearch deep researchComing soon
The headline next feature. Iterative, multi-round product research that refines a goal across multiple search iterations until the system converges. → AutoSearch
Cross-platform pricing via CrawleeComing soon
Real cross-platform pricing data — AliExpress, TikTok Shop, Google Shopping. Today the cross-platform sub-score is a neutral placeholder; with Crawlee live, it becomes a real signal. → Cross-platform pricing
Supplier discoveryComing soon
A list of likely suppliers per researched product so you can shop sourcing without leaving Hilal. → Supplier discovery
Historical tracking + alertsComing soon
Today’s data is point-in-time. Future: track BSR and price over time per ASIN; push an alert when thresholds cross. → Historical tracking
Saved-research collections + sharingComing soon
Group searches and watchlist items into named projects, share with teammates, comment in-line. → Collections
Roadmap (later)
- Per-feature granular permissions — gate AI chat, export, expand independently of base search access.
- Brand-deep dive — research at the brand level (every ASIN one brand sells, aggregated SellerScore).
- Reverse-keyword discovery — start from an ASIN you already know works; find the keywords driving it.
- Niche maturity score — meta-score on a category, not just a product.