Fuzzy search is great until the thing you want has an obvious, unambiguous answer. Type "downloads" into most launchers and you get a ranked guess: your real Downloads folder, sure, but also every other folder, file, and app that happens to share a few letters, all competing on a relevance score.
Known folders are not search problems
Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Applications - these are not fuzzy concepts. macOS already knows exactly where they are. So HyperKey resolves well-known folders directly, ahead of a general Spotlight query, instead of treating them as one more candidate to rank.
The difference shows up the moment you type. "Downloads" does not produce a ranked list you have to scan - it produces the folder, sitting first, every time.
Fuzzy search is still there for everything else
This is not an argument against fuzzy matching - it is the right tool for the other 99% of files and folders on your disk, the ones with no fixed location. Known folders are just the one case where a shortcut beats a search.
The best search result is the one you never have to look at twice.
One search field, two modes: designing Space-to-switch
HyperKey needed both app search and file search without turning into two separate tools. The answer was a single keystroke, not a second hotkey.
Designing a launcher that needs zero permissions
Most Mac launchers ask for Accessibility access on first launch. HyperKey never does - and that constraint shaped the whole architecture.
The 64KB pipe bug that made file search feel broken
File search worked perfectly in testing and then quietly hung on real machines. The cause was a subprocess pipe filling up faster than anyone expected.