Indie Hackers retired search. The only way to find one comment was the notification email.

Description and use

Indie Hackers removed search, profile activity, and notifications, yet the email notification still carried the exact comment link. By searching local mail, decoding the raw email, and extracting the URL with the commentId anchor, the author located and replied to the comment.

Problem

The platform removed all in-product discovery paths, making it impossible to locate a specific comment on Indie Hackers.

Outcome

Successfully located and replied to the comment using the email notification, demonstrating that legacy email channels can compensate for removed platform features.

Workflow

• 1. Search for the email containing the username on disk using grep.
• 2. Decode the entire email file with quopri and extract URLs with a regex.
• 3. Identify the comment URL with the ?commentId= anchor.
• 4. Use the URL to navigate to the comment and reply via the DOM.
• 5. Verify the reply was posted correctly by checking the comment hierarchy.

Evidence

Search no longer exists. Indie Hackers retired this feature in 2026, and it's not coming back.

Source

The link inside it is wrapped by an email tracking service and chopped up by quoted-printable soft line breaks, so it doesn't survive a casual copy-paste.

Source

First, decode the file whole rather than parsing it into MIME parts.

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Second, the anchor matters. ?commentId=... is what turns "a post" into "the specific comment."

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The reply box that opens is itself a .comment__main.

Source