Public Procurement Search

A search tool over Chile's open public procurement data, filtered to what really matters in this field: maker classrooms, fabrication labs, 3D printing, laser cutting and educational robotics. The problem it solves is concrete and personal: the official portal publishes hundreds of tenders a day and the useful ones get lost among the rest.

It has one technical decision worth noting. The interface does not talk directly to the official API, because that API does not allow requests from the browser; in between there is a small server function that acts as a bridge and also stores responses for fifteen minutes, so the same query is not repeated. That solves two things at once: the browser block and the cost of calls. The API access key lives only on the server, never in the code that reaches the user.

The project comes with its own demo mode, and it is well done: with the sample variable turned on it loads five sample tenders and shows a notice on screen saying they are sample data. There is no way to mistake the demo for real data, neither for whoever sees it nor for whoever programmed it three months later.

What is missing is deploying it so it queries the real API: request the free ticket, set it up in the hosting dashboard and validate against the service. One afternoon, and it is the only thing between this project and being finished.