Sharing & community lists

A lens is yours to keep private, but you can also share it. A shared lens becomes a community list: another member can follow your rules without rebuilding them by hand. There are two ways to share and two ways to take up someone else's list, and a list is always fully inspectable before you commit to it.

Two ways to share a lens

Publish any of your lenses from Settings → Search Control. A lens has three states:

• Private — the default. The lens is yours alone; no one else can see it.
• Unlisted — the lens gets a share link, /l/{token}, that you can hand to anyone. It does not appear in the public directory; only someone with the link can open it.
• Public — the lens is listed in the public community directory at /lenses, where any member can find it, in addition to keeping its share link.

Publishing mints the share link and makes the lens reachable; un-publishing returns it to private. Your name is never shown on a shared list — a list is judged by its rules, not its author.

Two ways to take up a list

When you open a shared list — at its /l/{token} link or from the directory — you have two choices:

• Subscribe. You follow the publisher's list. Its rules apply to your searches, and when the publisher revises the list you can take the update (see below). You keep no copy; you are tracking the original.
• Add a copy. Search Control deep-copies the list and its rules into your account as a new personal lens. The copy is a fork: fully yours to edit, with no further link back to the original. A later change by the publisher does not reach your copy.

Subscribe when you want to stay in step with a list you trust; add a copy when you want a starting point you will make your own.

Inspect before you subscribe

A shared list is fully inspectable. Its page shows every rule it carries — each block, lower, raise, pin, and redirect — in plain language, before you subscribe or copy. Nothing is hidden behind a name or a rating. You see exactly what the list will do to your results, and you decide with that in front of you. This is the whole trust model: a list earns its place by what it does, openly.

Keeping a subscription current

A list is not frozen at the moment you subscribe — the publisher can revise it. When they do, the list's version advances, and an update available indicator appears beside your subscription in Settings → Search Control. One click refreshes the subscription to the current version. Until you refresh, you stay on the version you subscribed to, so a publisher's change never alters your results without your say-so.

You can also mute a subscription without leaving it: a muted list keeps its place in your settings but its rules stop applying, so you can switch it off and on without re-subscribing. Unsubscribe to drop it entirely.

Curation

Neuji curates the public directory. Useful, well-made lists may be featured, which ranks them higher so they are easier to find. A list that is abusive or misleading can be removed from the directory. Curation touches only the public listing — your private and unlisted lenses are never affected.